


Safety of the Mind

by buttonstuck



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Anxiety, Canon-Typical Worms, Librarian Martin, M/M, Martin has lots of it, Mind-Reader Jon, Not A Fix-It, S1 Monster Jon rights, Slow Burn, Telepathy, and he's unhappy about it, okay on second thought more of a fix-it than i initially intended
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:09:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 43,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26384674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttonstuck/pseuds/buttonstuck
Summary: “If there are any mind readers out there, I’m sorry you just heard that and I hope you have a lovely day.”It was Martin's own little inside joke, when he was in a public place. He'd think very hard and then look up and around, trying to see if he’d surprised any stealthy telepaths. No one would look any the wiser, and Martin could go about his day assured in the knowledge that his thoughts were safe inside his head.Except.Today, when Martin called out to the mind readers of Greater London, or at least of the cramped, artistic cafe he was in, a man sitting several tables away jerked his head up and glanced around.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 280
Kudos: 946





	1. Little Mousy Professor Man

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of a "what if Jon had been marked by the Beholding before he came to the Institute instead of the Spider," and then I got to thinking about the Implications.

It was just a silly little thing that Martin did because he could. He liked things like that, things that were internal, just his, little jokes with himself that no one else needed to be in on. He’d heard this somewhere, or maybe he’d seen it in a show, and now, whenever he was in public and he remembered, he’d think:

_“If there are any mind readers out there, I’m sorry you just heard that and I hope you have a lovely day.”_

It was an all-purpose apology, because he didn’t know what kinds of terrible things mind readers heard on a daily basis, if they existed. And then, even though no part of him actually believed they did, he would look up and around, trying to see if he’d surprised any stealthy telepaths. No one would look any the wiser, and Martin could go about his day assured in the knowledge (that he already had, of course) that his thoughts were safe inside his head.

Except.

Today, when Martin called out to the mind readers of Greater London, or at least of the cramped, artistic cafe he was in, a man sitting several tables away jerked his head up and glanced around. He had a sharp face, a bit stark, and long, straight black hair pulled into a ponytail that threatened to come loose any second. In front of him he had the largest size cup the cafe offered, dwarfing his thin hands.

Martin had a moment of actual panic before he realized that he was being absolutely ridiculous and that people were allowed to look wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted. He huffed out a breath that was half of a laugh and took a sip of his own peppermint tea. It was still a bit too hot.

He shot a quick glance back up at the man, who was now reabsorbed in some papers he had in front of him. Martin smiled quietly to himself and decided that it was more fun to play this game with himself. He thought, very pointedly, _“I know your secret.”_

The man remained motionless, save for the minute turning of his head as he read. Martin didn’t know why he felt relief, because _once again_ there was no such thing as telepathy and this was just his own little inside joke. He watched the man for a moment without realizing that he hadn’t looked away. 

The man looked very tired, a bit off-kilter, like he was permanently ruffled by an invisible wind. He was kind of pretty, in an overworked-professor type of way. He had a sweater over a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, the collar awkwardly tucked into one side of the neck, like it had been thrown on in a rush. It was like he’d styled himself entirely off of Martin’s aesthetic academia Pinterest board. Which Martin had initially made as a _joke_ , of course, and anyway it wasn’t his fault that he was gay and had eyes.

The man, who hadn’t seemed to notice Martin’s absent staring yet, reached up suddenly and pulled his collar out from under the neck of his sweater. Martin stilled and then looked away quickly. 

_“It didn’t look bad,”_ he thought. 

The game had gotten a bit away from him, but there was something kind of fun and comforting about pretending you had a connection with a stranger. It wasn’t that different from what Martin used to do when he was by himself in a park or at a train station, finding people in the crowd and writing stories for them in his head, little histories of the lives of people he’d never met. It helped pass the time, and he thought it might make him more empathetic, even if none of what he thought was true. 

_“Are you pretending you can’t hear me? It doesn’t matter. I know you can.”_

Did the man stiffen a bit or was it Martin’s imagination? It probably had something to do with what he was reading. The man looked away from his reading and up at the rest of the cafe, and it wasn’t until his eyes darted past Martin’s that Martin realized he was staring again. He turned away immediately, busying himself with taking a drink. He had to head back to work anyway--the warmth of the drink and his little game had woken him up from his mid-afternoon slump enough.

 _“You caught me,”_ he thought as he got up. _“I’ll leave you be.”_

He bustled out of the cafe and into the bright, frigid air, feeling a bit lighter for all that he hadn’t actually spoken to anyone, and started for the university campus.

\--

It seemed as though the man with the long hair had recently become a regular at the cafe, or Martin had somehow stumbled into a wild coincidence, because he was there almost every time Martin walked in for the next two weeks. Just as the first time, he always had some papers with him, in a manila folder, and he stayed glued to them the entire time.

Martin thought it was just fine with him. The man wasn’t hard to look at, not that Martin was staring, obviously, and he gave Martin something to do while he psyched himself up for customer service. That “something to do,” of course, was carrying on a one-sided, mental conversation with the man. He knew it probably wasn’t for the best, to feel like he knew someone he’d never spoken to, had only seen a few times, but the man’s apparent skittishness meant that he had a habit of looking as though he were reacting to Martin’s thoughts.

Martin knew it was just the man (whom he had named “Walt,” mostly at random, because Martin always named the people whose lives he made up) jumping at sounds, or reading very animatedly. It was a nice, safe little way for Martin to spend his time, entirely in his own head, having a pleasant conversation with someone who couldn’t answer him and _complicate_ it.

The third time Martin saw “Walt,” it seemed like he had more papers spread in front of them than usual, and he looked a bit more tired, if that were possible. He leaned on his hand as he diligently read through the material, occasionally taking short notes with an ancient-looking green pen. He nibbled on the end of the pen when he wasn’t writing.

 _“Are you always working or do you just come here to do that?”_ Martin asked in his own head. The man pursed his lips and flipped a page over. He wrote something down, and when he lifted the pen he seemed to hesitate for a moment, finally resting it absently against his lip instead of in between his teeth. His lips were thin but pretty. He was pretty all over, if not a little rough. Martin felt a little warmth in his chest, the glow of seeing someone attractive and realizing it and having the secret just for himself. 

Martin realized that he must be staring quite a lot to notice all of these little things, and with anyone else he’d be worried about being discovered, but Walt seldom looked up from his work, even to drink his colossal coffee. When he did his eyes were often a bit unfocused, like he was only looking away from the pages to think about something very abstract. He also always looked a bit annoyed.

The constant staring meant that Martin saw it a half second in advance when one day Walt went to reach for his coffee without looking and missed, knocking the cup over and spilling its contents all over the table.

He jumped about a foot in the air and gathered up his papers frantically. Martin tensed as he watched. Other people were looking over as well, and Walt seemed to be acutely aware of that. Once the papers were out of the way he righted the cup, not that it mattered anymore, and stared at the table with a look somewhere between resigned and forlorn. Coffee was dripping onto the floor.

Martin was up before he recognized what he was doing, grabbing a large handful of paper napkins from the counter and rushing over. Walt blinked at him in confusion as he flashed a small, apologetic smile. 

“Happens to the best of us,” Martin said, recognizing absently that it was the first time he’d actually spoken to Walt, and that the man’s name was probably not Walt, and that he didn’t really know what to do, because he’d been having conversations in his head that the man had no idea about, and that they were complete strangers. 

An employee was coming around with a towel, and Martin’s little pile of paper napkins were not doing a very good job with the amount of liquid on the table. When Walt was done with the coffee it had to make up about a quarter of his total body weight. It didn’t seem very healthy.

“I didn’t ask,” Walt said, a bit sharply, and Martin blinked at him in surprise. The employee showed up, thanked Martin for helping, and assured them that he’d take over. Martin stepped back. Walt had the papers clutched to his chest, though they didn’t seem to have entirely escaped the coffee accident. 

“You’re welcome,” Martin replied, a bit testily. He’d been caught off guard. He’d come over to try and help and the man was looking at him now like he was some kind of waiting criminal. 

“That’s not…” Walt started, and then closed his eyes. Despite the rude introduction, Martin thought his voice was nice. “ _T_ _hank you_.” It sounded like he was being held at gunpoint.

“Of course,” Martin said, not sure exactly how to proceed. Should he go back to his table? It seemed like the other man was on the verge of saying something else, but that could also just have been his face. Was it weird that Martin was lingering? How long had he even been there? Not long. The employee was almost done wiping up the table. Walt looked like he was ready to bolt.

“My name is _Jon_ , not--” he said suddenly, emphatically. There was a momentary pause, then his eyes widened. Martin stared back. “...by the way,” he finished lamely. 

_Jon_ fumbled with something in his pocket for a moment, pulled out a couple of bills, and handed them swiftly to the employee, apologizing for the mess. The employee tried to give them back but Jon was already out of there, walking alarmingly fast for someone as short as he was. 

Martin just watched him go, mind whirring.

\--

“I’m being ridiculous,” Martin said.

“Yeah, probably,” replied his coworker Isabelle, who was standing at the counter and scanning in books. 

“Do you believe that people can read minds?”

Isabelle coughed on her own laugh. “Excuse me?”

“Nothing,” Martin said quickly. Isabelle turned to look at him.

“Of course I believe in it,” she said. “I’m reading your mind right now.” She wiggled her fingers and made a _woooo_ noise. 

“I was joking,” Martin said. Isabelle smiled and went back to the large stack of books in front of her. 

“Why? You need to read someone’s mind?”

“What if someone were reading mine?” Martin asked after a moment. 

“I don’t know, are you thinking anything salacious?”

“Obviously not!” Martin said. He thought about explaining his little game and decided that it sounded strange and probably very sad to someone who wasn’t him. “It was just a joke.”

Isabelle hummed noncommittally. Martin looked back at his computer and sighed softly. He’d just had an awkward interaction with a stranger and that’s why he was thinking about it so much. It was just _anxiety_ , about talking to people, not about a man in a cafe happening to have magic psychic powers. Martin wouldn’t be that lucky, or unlucky, or whatever it was.

The door to the library opened and Martin glanced up, and maybe he actually _was_ that unlucky. Jon stalked in, a messenger bag over one shoulder, looking distant and a bit stern. He looked around, eyes finally lighting on the front desk, and he walked over like he was on a mission.

Isabelle slid the stack of books to the side and put on a pleasant smile while Martin hoped that by staring at his computer with enough intensity he could become invisible.

“How can I help you?”

“I’m looking for this,” Jon said impatiently, setting a small slip of paper on the counter. Martin chanced a glance up and managed to catch Jon at the moment he saw him and realized who he was.

The rational part of Martin’s brain told him that there was absolutely no reason he should feel weird around this man, this _complete stranger who knew nothing about him_. That was hard to keep in his head when Jon’s eyes narrowed at him.

“Okay,” Isabelle said, turning slightly toward Martin, “can you help him? I’ve got to finish up these books.”

“Of course,” Martin said automatically. He stood and came over a bit awkwardly, looking at the slip of paper. “It’s on this floor. This is going to be in the back left--”

“I’m in a bit of a rush,” Jon said. “Can you just bring me there?”

Martin swallowed and nodded. Then, because it was a habit now, when he saw Jon’s face, he thought, _“Have you slept at all?”_

There was no reaction except for Jon’s expectant look. Martin went around the desk and started toward the section of the stacks where Jon’s book would be. He could sense Jon’s presence behind him in a strange way, the feeling of being stared at, and of being _seen_. 

“It’ll be right in there,” Martin said, pointing toward a small section of shelving. Jon swept past him, scrutinizing the books for a moment before pulling out a particularly thick one in a book jacket that was ripping at the edges. It looked quite old. “Need anything else?”

Jon opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked at Martin sharply. “Silence while I’m working,” he said, seemingly before he caught himself. 

Martin’s eyebrows went up and he realized with a big, single rush that all of his anxiety had been for nothing, because Jon was simply _antisocial._ His tension slipped away from him in a wave of relief and he nodded primly. “Got it,” he said.

Jon’s brow furrowed briefly and he stared at Martin for a moment more. “Thank you,” he said perfunctorily, with the same tension he’d had in the cafe, like he’d only just realized that it was something humans said to each other. It was as good a dismissal as any, and Martin took it.

Isabelle must have seen his face when he returned to the desk, though he’d thought that he’d schooled it into something less obvious, because she snorted.

“Have a good time?”

“He’s a piece of work,” Martin said, but he didn’t explain further. Isabelle worked the same job, so she understood. Some patrons were just _like that_. 

“Shame,” she said as Martin rounded the desk. “He’s cute. In that Edwardian mad scientist way you like.”

“Oh my god,” Martin complained as he sat. “I can’t tell you anything.”

“Okay, shh, he’s coming back,” Isabelle said, plastering her customer service smile over her face again. Her voice changed almost scarily. “Find everything you need?”

“Yes,” Jon grumbled, plopping the large book on the counter. Isabelle checked it out for him. Martin noticed that he had a public library card instead of a university ID. Not that he was watching.

 _“I liked my mind-version of you better,”_ Martin thought as Jon started to leave, the same far away purpose in his eyes. _“Not that it’s your fault.”_

Jon hesitated, shot a glance over at Martin, and then hurried away, just like he had in the cafe. Then the door was closing behind him and Martin let out a huff of a laugh. 

“What book did he get?” he asked. Isabelle clicked through the checkout report and whistled.

“It’s a mouthful. _An Exploration of Exmoor: And the Hill Country of West Somerset: With Notes on Its Archæology._ That’s “arch _æ_ ology” with that a-e letter. 1893.”

“Sounds properly stuffy,” Martin said. Isabelle laughed. 

“That must have been a really bad fifteen seconds you were out there with him,” she said.

“I saw him when I was getting tea before I got here,” Martin said. “He spilled his coffee and when I helped him clean it up he just snapped at me and ran out.”

“Not exactly a meet-cute.”

“Not at all,” Martin said, and he took a private second to mourn the little one-sided conversations he’d had.

\--

Jon didn’t show up at the cafe for the next week, and Martin definitely only barely noticed. He didn’t send out his message to roaming mind-readers and drank his tea in peace before heading to the library. In fact, Martin was absolutely paying so little attention that he didn’t care enough to be caught off-guard when he walked into the cafe and saw Jon, sat at his usual table, which was covered in papers and folders. His coffee had a lid this time. 

When Martin ordered his regular tea he saw Jon look up out of the corner of his eye. Martin didn’t meet his eyes--his own gaze slipped over Jon’s general area like a magnet being repelled, and he went to sit at a booth with no regard for the eyes that may or may not have been on him. 

The true staring didn’t start until a couple of days later. Every day Martin would show up, would get his tea, would see Jon sitting there, and would do nothing except sit and drink. Then the sensation of those eyes on him, of being watched, struck him, and he looked up just in time to see Jon’s gaze dart away.

Interesting.

Martin kept catching him, kept watching Jon avert his eyes and stare furiously down at his papers. Did he have a problem with Martin? They’d interacted a total of twice, and in both of those instances Martin had been helpful and Jon had been snappy. It seemed as though if anyone should have a problem with anyone, it should be the other way around. 

And Martin couldn’t really help it, when he caught Jon looking at him again. 

_“Do I have something on my face?”_ he thought pointedly. Just a nice little nightcap for his own inside joke.

And then Jon froze, eyes wide, staring down at his work, like a search beam had found him and he was naked. Martin’s wry smile dropped in an instant. 

Coincidence, again. Jon was jumpy and he’d been caught staring at a stranger off and on for almost half an hour. He seemed high-strung enough to get embarrassed about that, or at least annoyed.

And Martin absolutely did not believe in magic powers, or psychics, or telepathy, but he continued anyway.

_“I’d say it’s rude to stare, but that’d be hypocritical of me, wouldn’t it?”_

Jon took a deep breath and set his brow, picking up his pen and scribbling something quickly. 

_“Though you don’t seem to have a problem with being rude.”_

Jon’s hand jerked and he scrunched up his face before setting his jaw and crossing out the mistake. There was no way. Martin was a human, and humans were great at finding patterns that weren’t there, and he was doing that right now, interpreting Jon’s unrelated actions to fit his own internal narrative.

Then Jon looked up, like he had many times that day. He seemed a bit startled to see Martin already looking at him, but he didn’t look away.

 _“If you can hear me, look embarrassed and pretend to read.”_ Martin knew he was being a bit cheeky, but there was some strange floaty sensation in his stomach, a sense of unreality and discovery.

Jon’s eyes snapped back down and he did look properly chagrined, but then he paused, as though he were gaining some kind of self awareness, and shot Martin the briefest look possible before taking his drink instead.

Martin could have laughed. There was no way. It was a _joke_. A made up thing he did in his own brain to pass the time. There was no way in the world he was interpreting this correctly.

_“I can see why you’d be so grouchy if you can hear everyone’s thoughts all the time.”_

Jon closed his eyes and rested his forehead on his hands briefly. He looked exhausted, but from what Martin had seen that was his usual state. 

_“Why would you work in a public place if you can read minds? Seems counterproductive.”_

And finally Jon stood, gathering up his papers and drink. He took a long swig and shoved the papers into his shoulder bag. 

Martin could almost make out that Jon was muttering something to himself, unable to hear anything but seeing his lips moving minutely. 

And it looked a bit like _“why, indeed.”_

Jon walked quickly toward the door, and if Martin didn’t know any better, he’d think that Jon spared him a quick glance before the door jingled closed behind him.

\--

“So what, are you a paranormal investigator now?” Isabelle asked. Martin laughed self-consciously.

“Crazy, more likely,” he said. Isabelle snorted.

“I don’t know, seems pretty legitimate to me. Though if I had someone staring at me in a coffee shop every single day I think I’d look pretty suspicious, too.”

“I haven’t been _staring_ ,” Martin said, and he couldn’t even lie convincingly to himself. He sighed deeply. “He probably thinks I’m some kind of serial murderer.”

“What, for staring? You’re a teddy bear, Martin. You could stare at someone with a butcher’s knife in hand and they wouldn’t think anything of it.” Isabelle finished wiping down the services desk and jumped up onto the tall chair at her computer. “Anyway, if it turns out he _can_ read your mind, he probably just thinks you’re a dork.”

That was also a possibility. “It’s just that I can’t go up to him and ask him point blank if he can read my mind,” Martin said.

“Why not?” Isabelle asked.

“What?”

“Why not just walk up and ask?”

Martin furrowed his brow and looked at Isabelle blankly. “He would think I’m...you know…”

“Insane? What does it matter? It’s not like you know him.”

Martin considered this, fidgeting with a pen. Why couldn’t he just do that, just come by Jon’s table at the cafe and ask him if he’d been secretly reading Martin’s mind for the past month…? and just the idea of it sent Martin into a mild fit of anxiety. He could see Jon’s face, his tired eyes, as he would say something like _“what in the world are you on about?”_ and Martin would stutter and backtrack and in the end he’d really have no more idea than when he started, because if Jon were some kind of feral telepath he wouldn’t just disclose that to any stranger who asked, would he…?

“Just can’t,” Martin said. Isabelle raised an eyebrow and then, to Martin’s dismay, a slow grin stretched across her face.

“Don’t want to mess up your chances?” she asked conspiratorially. Martin made a noise and leaned back in his chair, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. 

“Don’t even.”

“I’ve only seen him once but he really is your type, hm?”

“I really have work to do,” Martin tried.

“Little mousy professor man, wearing sweaters, looking grumpy? He was handed to you from God.”

“Oh my god, I have perfectly normal taste,” Martin asserted, giving up. “It’s not just... _mousy professor men_ , whatever that means, and I’m never going to talk to him, anyway, so it doesn’t even matter.”

Isabelle giggled. “Whatever you say.”

“I do say,” Martin shot back with a bit of a pout. Isabelle smiled knowingly and spun back around in her chair. Martin could hear her typing. He looked at his own computer screen, a split screen between the library’s fossil of a database program and a document of a half-written poem.

There were a few minutes of relative silence, besides students coming and going and the occasional book checkout. Then Martin heard Isabelle gasp a little. She swung around, eyes bright.

“Wait, you’ve heard about that weird old...oh, um...what’s it called? The spooky old ghost library. But it’s not just a library. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

Martin searched his brain for the nearby libraries, or at least the ones they often loaned books to or from. “Spooky old ghost library” wasn’t ringing any bells, but there was a name on the tip of his tongue.

“The Institute!” Isabelle said suddenly. “The something Institute. Starts with an “m.” Anyway, I have a friend who thought she saw some kind of ghost, in her office bathroom or something, I don’t remember, and apparently you go there and tell them whatever paranormal story you have, and they look into it for you.”

“...okay?” Martin said. 

“Well, you should go there and tell them about Mr. Short, Dark, and Telepathic! Have them do a little sleuthing for you.”

“Oh,” Martin started, looking pained. “It’s really not that big of a deal.”

“I’m sure they get all kinds of terrible stories about someone’s...I don’t know, someone’s dog getting possessed or Eva’s clogged office toilet. If you come in with ‘mind reading’ I’m sure they’d think it was interesting, at least. They must believe in all this, if it’s their job.”

“And then what, they ask him if he can read my mind for me?”

Isabelle shrugged. “Maybe. Worth a shot, if you seriously think it’s true.”

“Do I?” Martin asked, mostly at himself. “It’s pretty ridiculous.”

“Well, what if they confirm that he can read your mind? Then the next time you see him you can start putting the moves on him, entirely in your head! No one but him would even know. Sounds perfect for you.”

“This is really what you’re caught up on, huh?” Martin asked, a bit more resigned. He opened a new browser tab and his fingers hovered over the keyboard. 

“I have to live vicariously through someone,” Isabelle said wryly. “My husband wouldn’t appreciate me having these fun little crushes myself.”

 _Institute_ , Martin typed, pausing. _Institute london ghosts_. Let no one say he couldn’t do an efficient Google search. 

There it was, the name that he’d seen before but which had escaped him. “The Magnus Institute,” he said. Isabelle squeaked.

“That’s it! Wait, are you looking it up? Are you going to do it?” She seemed more excited than she needed to be.

“Maybe,” Martin said, narrowing his eyes a little as he read. He clicked on a map. It was close. Less than a fifteen minute walk, if Martin was quick about it. He didn’t really walk slowly, anyway. There was too much anxiety balled up inside of him for him to amble. “Only maybe!”

“Let me know,” Isabelle said, smiling brightly. “Eva said that one of the guys in the office where she told her story was a real looker.”

“Can you not try to set me up with _every_ living man?” Martin appealed half-heartedly. 

“I was just saying! Something to keep an eye out for.” She winked. Martin rolled his eyes.

\--

The building was definitely old, but it didn’t seem to be in any kind of disrepair. It was austere, the words “The Magnus Institute” set in gold lettering above the door. Martin clutched at his phone, the walking directions still open. He suddenly felt very silly, standing in front of the building. Mind reading? He was being ridiculous and they’d think he was ridiculous. He didn’t even know where to go.

The door opened and Martin jumped. There was a young woman leaving, and she raised her eyebrows at him, holding the door. Martin took a second to process that she was holding it for _him_ , and he thanked her quickly and scurried inside. Well, that was that. It would be even more awkward for him to come right back out.

The main lobby was rather nice, if not outdated. It certainly seemed official enough. There was a woman at a desk near the door, and she looked up with a warm smile as the door closed behind Martin. He swallowed and quickly pocketed his phone. 

“Welcome. How can I help you?” the woman asked. She was a bit round and seemed very pleasant, and it calmed Martin’s anxiety a bit. Not quite enough, though.

“I’m, uh...someone told me that, um, this is where you go if you have, you know…” Christ, he was really unable to control his own mouth. The woman watched him patiently. “A sort of...paranormal...story?”

The woman didn’t quirk an eyebrow or seem particularly phased by the question. “Of course. Do you have a statement you’d like to give?”

Martin nodded, shifting from foot to foot.

“Did you call ahead?” the woman asked, and Martin grimaced. 

“Oh, no, was I supposed to? I can...I can do that and come another time…” Which was a lie. If he walked out of the door without talking to someone, he wasn’t going to come back. 

“No, no,” the woman assured him. “It’s okay, dear. Just checking. Just sign in right here. You’ll want to go down to the Archival Office. B-1 on the elevator, right over there. Just say you’d like to make a statement and they’ll take care of you.”

“Right. Thanks,” Martin said, returning the woman’s smile as well as he could. These things were always so much easier than Martin thought they’d be beforehand. With one marginally successful interaction down, he headed for the elevator and called it.

There was a chart by the elevator doors. Next to B-1 read “Archives.” It seemed a bit ominous, and it being in the basement also didn’t do much to comfort Martin. He supposed, though, that it did add to the ghostly ambiance.

The trip down was uneventful. There were three desks in the cosy office area of B-1, which was a little warm and carpeted. At two of the desks were a man and woman, both of whom looked up as Martin approached. The man had to be the one Isabelle had mentioned, because he was indeed very handsome, in a roguish sort of way. 

“Hello,” the woman said, looking up at Martin expectantly.

“I have, uh, a statement?” Martin said. “I was told to come down here for that.”

“Ah, right!” the woman said. She took a moment to shuffle through her desk for something, and then pulled out a piece of paper. “Fill this out and we can take your statement in a little bit. You can give a written statement or have it recorded. I’m Sasha, by the way, and that’s Tim,” she continued, handing Martin the paper and a pen. “Let us know if you have any questions.”

“Okay. I’m, um, Martin,” Martin said, taking the offered items. He looked around, and he must have looked sufficiently lost, because Tim leaned over and patted the corner of the empty desk by him. 

“Right here, mate.” If the secretary in the lobby had had a warm smile, Tim’s was almost blinding, in a nice way. Sasha smiled a bit like she was in on a fun inside joke with you. Martin wasn’t sure when he started classifying people by smile, but he supposed that as methods of judgment went it was a positive one.

Martin sat gingerly in an uncomfortable wooden chair by the desk and looked at the paper he was given. It was a form, simple enough, asking his name, some contact information, and the nature of his “experience.” It was all easy enough, although Martin felt a bit silly writing the words “suspected mind reader.”

“You got his one, Sash?” Tim asked. She glanced at him and nodded. Then, to Martin, Tim said, “Nothing to do with you, don’t worry. Boss’ll get crabby if I don’t finish all twenty assignments he gave me by five.”

“I can imagine,” Martin said, shoulders loosening a bit. This was perfectly pleasant, and he wondered why he was so worried. He finished up the form and brought it to Sasha, who looked it over quickly.

“So what phantasms bring you in?” Tim asked. Martin huffed out a laugh. 

“Mind reading,” Sasha answered for Martin. Tim and Sasha shared a quick, unreadable look. Tim hummed. 

“Definitely spooky. Should I keep my internal monologue PG-13?”

“Not me,” Martin clarified. “Um...someone I met.”

“Ah, well, for the best nobody sees what’s going on up here.”

“Ignore Tim. So do you think you’d like to write it down?” Sasha asked. “Or I can just have you record it here. Either way, you just tell your story, no pressure.” She tapped a small USB microphone on the edge of her desk. 

Writing seemed to Martin like it would take much longer than he wanted to spend there, regardless of how okay the company seemed. “I can record it. If that’s easier.”

“Roger. It’s just like a little interview, and you can give as much detail as you’d like.”

Sasha set up the recording software and angled the microphone toward herself. “Statement of Martin Blackwood, regarding a suspected mind reader. Statement beg--oh, _really_.” She glared at her computer. “It crashed.”

“Again?” Tim asked. Sasha sighed sharply and opened the program again.

“Take two,” she said. “Statement of Martin Blackwood, regarding...oh, you’re not serious.”

“Do you need to update it?” Tim asked. “Martin, you can come over here. My computer’s at least an epoch less ancient.”

“Like you haven’t had it crash,” Sasha drawled.

“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” Tim said, beckoning Martin over. He had a microphone of his own, which he set up quickly. Martin brought the chair over to Tim’s desk.

“Testing, testing, bippity boppity, one two one two. Okay. Lemme see your sheet.” Tim scanned Martin’s form and nodded. “Cool.” He cleared his throat. “Statement of Martin Blackwood, regarding a suspected mind reader. Statement begins.” A pause. “So you said you met someone you think can read minds. Can you walk me through how that happened?”

He had a pretty decent interviewer voice. He looked expectantly at Martin, who cleared his throat. “Well, I’ve been going to this cafe for a while, pretty near here, actually…”

“Hold on,” Tim said, scrunching up his nose at his computer. He held out his finger. “Okay, Sasha, not a word, but it stopped picking up the sound right after the test.”

“Is it one of _those_ ones?” Sasha asked.

“Probably,” Tim said. Then, to Martin, “Might have to foist this one onto big old boss man. No one ever told him computers were invented so he records everything on cassette tape. Which I guess has the advantage of not crashing.”

“Depends on how hard you throw,” Sasha said. 

The elevator _ding_ ’d and Tim gave Martin a grim smile. “That’ll be him, right on time.”

There were footsteps in the short hall and then, to Martin’s sudden and absolute horror, Jon appeared in the doorway.

For a split second Martin had the hope that Jon was also there to give some kind of paranormal statement. Though it would probably be about the stranger who was staring at him in coffee shops. It didn’t matter. It would be better than if he were--

“Hey, boss. Sufficiently caffeinated?” Tim asked. Well, there went that.

“Quite,” Jon said, unwrapping a scarf from around his neck. Then he paused, eyes finally lighting on Martin. They were locked like that for a second, Jon’s eyes narrow and Martin’s blown wide. 

“Hi,” Martin said, surprising himself with his own voice. He suddenly regained control of his body and got up, nearly upsetting Tim’s microphone in the process. He glanced at Tim and Sasha. “You know, it’s really okay, if it can’t record maybe that’s a sign, huh? Hah. I’ll, uh, I’ll stop bothering you.”

“That’s gotta be a new record,” Tim said, almost silently. Sasha rolled her eyes. “Quickest Jon victim.”

“We’ve been trying to get Mr. Blackwood’s statement down, but the audio isn’t recording well,” Sasha explained.

“Ah,” Jon said neutrally, finally taking his piercing gaze away from Martin. “Right. I’ll take care of it. Keep...working on follow-up for the Hillard case.”

“Right-o,” Sasha said. Jon turned and went to unlock a heavy wooden door that Martin hadn’t really noticed. He’d been paying too much attention to Tim and Sasha and his own anxiety. A plaque on the door read “Head Archivist.” 

There was no way he’d be able to give a real statement now, with the object of it sitting across from him, potentially able to read his mind and know that that’s what he was here for...if he _could_ read minds, anyway. What would the point even be? Or maybe Jon would pretend that he had no idea what Martin was talking about, like he wasn’t the man in the cafe, and he’d send Martin on his merry way with no intention of ever looking at his story again. Or _maybe_ he was a mind reader but had to keep it under wraps for some reason and now that Martin had discovered his secret he was going to quietly strangle him in the office and Tim and Sasha were his accomplices and they’d hide Martin’s body. Martin had wrinkled his form a bit from holding it so tightly. 

He followed Jon into the office, which was smaller than he’d expected. The air was a bit staler here. Jon gestured for Martin to close the door behind him, and Martin’s heart rate jumped. 

“You can relax,” Jon said, in a way that gave Martin the sense he didn’t use the word often. He draped his long coat over the back of his chair and cleared off a small portion of his large oak desk. “Sit.”

Martin cautiously perched on the old armchair across from Jon. He held out his form but Jon shook his head, instead steepling his hands in front of him on the desk. 

There was a long moment of the tensest silence Martin had ever been a part of. Jon stared at him, like he had done in the cafe the week before, like he was simultaneously utterly focused and very far away, deep in his own head, a little worried. For a split second it was familiar. Martin took a deep breath.

“It’s really fine,” he said. “I, I don’t need to...I’m only here on a dare, really,” he tried for a laugh. “You know how it is, uh, friends and…”

“Martin.”

Martin fidgeted. “Yeah.”

“Would you like to make your statement?”

Martin considered his options briefly. He could stumble his way through making up a story wholecloth, something he’d never been particularly good at on-the-spot. He could tell the actual story, watch the ridiculous nature of it dawn in Jon’s eyes, and never be able to go back to that coffee shop again. Or he could make his escape with some dignity left, and forget that he’d ever suspected anyone of being able to read his mind.

Something seemed to flicker in Jon’s eyes, but his expression remained constant. 

“I have to get back to work, actually,” Martin said, each word a bit difficult. “I thought this might be a quick little...I don’t know what I thought. Sorry for...uh...for wasting your time.”

Jon scrutinized him for a moment before blinking out of whatever thoughtful reverie he’d been in and nodding. “No harm done, if you’re sure. Should I have one of my assistants show you out?”

Martin shook his head, feeling distinctly as though he’d lost some kind of game. “I’m good. Um, thank you? Or sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Jon said brusquely. “If you change your mind, we’re here all business hours.”

“Right.” Martin stood, did an awkward little nod that almost seemed like a bow, which would definitely have been weird and out of place, and did his best not to look like he was hurrying out.

“Didn’t record analog either?” Tim asked when Martin reappeared, closing the Head Archivist door behind him. 

“No, I didn’t...I just realized that I’m late for something and, you know.” Martin let out a deeply insincere laugh. “Sorry for taking you away from whatever you were...okay, bye.”

He made for the elevator, feeling very silly. Now there were at least three more people in the world who thought he was weird and awkward, and he didn’t have anything else to show for it. Except for now knowing where Jon worked. It was an unbelievable coincidence. 

Martin waved to the nice secretary as he left. “Have a nice evening, Mr. Blackwood,” she said brightly. 

“You too,” he said, smiling a little more easily with her, since she hadn’t seen his about-face downstairs. One success out of four, then.

The wind on the street was alarmingly cold after the cozy warmth of the Archival Office. He paused for a moment by the doors, calming himself. 

_Have a nice evening, Mr. Blackwood._

_Martin, would you like to make your statement?_

Martin couldn’t remember if he’d ever given Jon his first name.


	2. Just Library Questions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone! The support for the first chapter was really overwhelming and I would die for every single commenter.
> 
> As a note: some people mentioned the Not a Fix-It tag, and I'd like to clarify that this basically just means that some Bad Canon Events may still be happening, despite the changes.

“I folded,” Martin said morosely as he set down his bag by his desk the next day. Isabelle rolled her eyes.

“Typical. Did you at least see the inside? Was it full of cobwebs and skeleton hands?”

“It was just...normal?” Martin said. “Really normal. Didn’t look like the kind of place they’d do anything spooky.”

“They could at least have a little ambiance,” Isabelle said. Martin huffed out a laugh. 

“Well, it turned out that the man I was there to talk about is the one who takes the statements,” Martin said. “So that spooked me plenty.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Wish I were,” Martin said. “I couldn’t just tell him, to his face, that I thought he was reading my mind. I’d never survive the embarrassment.” He massaged his temple. “And I can take a lot of embarrassment.”

“Well, it was worth a shot,” Isabelle sighed. “Maybe next time you have a paranormal encounter. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.” She winked and then turned to start typing, reminding Martin that he did, in fact, have work of his own to do.

The next hour was largely uneventful, save for Martin having to replace the magenta ink in the color printer and getting some on his thumb, and as he sat back at his desk he thought that he might be able to forget about his own social incompetence. 

“Have you checked the inter-library requests?” Isabelle asked as she herself returned to the services desk, pushing a large metal cart of books in front of her. “I forgot.”

Martin paused for a moment to think. “No, I just checked patron reservations. On it.”

He clicked through the library system absently. Inter-library requests were largely from other universities, with the occasional secondary school. There was one request now. Martin glanced down to the shelves behind the main desk counter. He’d needed to print some more book inserts for inter-library loans, but there seemed to be enough for now. He looked back.

He blinked at the screen. 

_5 items requested | delivery to: Research Library, Magnus Institute | contact: E. Bouchard | loan time: 2 weeks | expedited delivery requested_

Breath left him in a rush. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Hm?”

Martin didn’t realize that he’d spoken out loud. “It’s the...it’s nothing. One request. Five books.” He tightened his jaw. “I can pick them if you’re busy.”

“That’d be lovely,” Isabelle said absently. 

He really needed to stop finding patterns in everything, Martin thought as he scribbled the book codes on a slip of paper and went into the stacks to find them. He was sure that they’d received loan requests from the Magnus Institute before. The name hadn’t been entirely foreign to him. It was just coincidence that it had to happen again right after he’d made a fool of himself there. 

The books weren’t anything remarkable either. No crazy ghost tales, or ancient tomes, not that Martin was sure his library had any of those. They were all non-fiction, a bit unrelated to each other. Martin didn’t make a point of scrutinizing patrons’ book choices. Sometimes he didn’t even look at titles as he checked them out. 

So there was nothing to worry about, or to think involved him at all, because very few things in the world actually involved him. If there was a protagonist of the world out there, it wasn’t Martin, and he was fine with that. He carried the books back to the desk and set about putting bright green inserts in the covers. 

“Expedited delivery,” he murmured. Then, to Isabelle, “The courier pickup happened already, didn’t it?”

“Little while ago, I think,” Isabelle said. 

It was a Friday, Martin realized, and the delivery wouldn’t happen again until Monday. Expedited delivery requested. It was unfortunate that they’d missed the courier, but there was nothing Martin could do about it. 

He checked the request ticket time. Oh. Right at the start of his shift. He just hadn’t checked it. His mouth flattened to a thin line. If he’d gotten to it earlier, it probably would have gotten into the inter-library loan box in time. 

“I can actually run these over myself,” he said, before he even realized what his mouth was doing. “If you can watch the desk.”

Isabelle waved a hand. “You’re too nice, you know.”

Martin wanted to argue that it wasn’t niceness so much as guilt about disappointing people, but he wasn’t sure that they were, in practice, that different. He owed nothing to this E. Bouchard, or the Magnus Institute. He could wait until Monday. 

Martin was too good at finding patterns in everything.

He started pulling on his coat. “It’s close. I’ll just pop over. I need to stretch my legs anyway. Might as well do it on the clock.”

Isabelle laughed. “Have fun.”

Martin wasn’t sure he would. He gathered the books into a bag and set off into the crisp air. It was bright, though it was verging on four in the afternoon. He didn’t know why he seemed so eager to get back to the Magnus Institute, all things considered. He also didn’t know why he _wouldn’t_ go, without making it weird.

As he walked, he got more and more confident, as much as he could. There was no reason to feel so uncomfortable around the Institute. He’d spoken to all of four people, said nothing particularly bad, if he thought about it, and had left in very little time. He had been blowing it all out of proportion, like he always did about everything. His cheeks started to sting a little from the cold as he walked, but it was nice to get out.

The doors were the same as he came up on them, large and imposing, but this time there was no one to tip his hand and let him in. He took a deep breath and opened them, revealing the small foyer and the lobby beyond. There, at the desk, sat the same nice woman. She smiled up at him as he entered.

“Oh, hello!” she said. “Mr. Blackwood.”

She must have a superpower for remembering names. Martin shifted the bag on his shoulder.

“I have a delivery for, uh…”

“Mr. Bouchard,” the woman supplied. “He said someone would be coming in soon.”

Martin didn’t know what to say to that. He’d been expected? Him deciding to take the books over by himself had been a spur-of-the-moment idea. Of course, if the man in question, since it seemed to be a man, had been expecting the courier, then it was good that Martin had decided to come by. He smiled.

“That’s the one,” he said. “Should I sign in?”

“No need,” the woman said. Martin glanced briefly at her desk. There was a small nameplate sat upon it, and he felt silly for not having looked at it last time. Rosie. No second name. That was fine. “I’ll just write you in. I’ll let Elias know you’re here, and then you can head on up.”

“Oh, um…” Martin furrowed his brow. “Couldn’t I just, you know...leave these here?” He couldn’t exactly leave the library desk unattended, or Isabelle without help. 

“He asked me to send you up. I’m sure it’ll take not but a minute,” Rosie said. She pressed a button on her desk phone. “Elias? The book delivery is here. Should I send him to you?”

She waited a moment, Martin watching the phone and shifting his weight from foot to foot. “He’s very busy,” she supplied after a moment of silence. 

Then, muffled but stern, _“Yes. Thank you, Rosie.”_

“Lovely,” Rosie said. “Third floor, right out of the elevator, end of the hall.”

“Thanks,” Martin said, waiting until she couldn’t see his face to wrinkle his nose uncomfortably. She always made everything sound so pleasant. He’d much rather have left the books with her. 

In the elevator, B-1 nearly glowed at him, for how much he noticed it. He hit 3. 

The upstairs hallways were just as underwhelmingly normal as the Archives had been, if not a bit more sterile and white. At the end of the hall, true to Rosie’s word, was a door that read “Director.” It certainly seemed a little more important than “Head Archivist,” and this nameplate wasn’t old or peeling. 

Martin knocked, though the door was open just a crack. A thin, pointy “come in” answered him. 

The door didn’t creak when he pushed it open, and it wasn’t as heavy as the door to Jon’s office had been. It opened to a rather well-decorated office with bright windows, and a man sitting at a large oak desk, flanked by two carefully-curated bookshelves. 

The man seemed maybe fifteen years older than Martin, with features even sharper than Jon’s and something cool in his eyes. He gave a polite smile as Martin entered.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “I trust the books weren’t too hard to find.”

“No, not at all,” Martin said. He slipped the bag of books off of his shoulder, unsure of where to put them. He didn’t want to dump the bag onto Elias’s--Mr. Bouchard’s?--desk, or set them on the floor. He paused a moment, flashing a self-conscious smile. “Where would you like these?”

“You can put them right there,” Elias said. “I do apologize for the rush.”

“Oh, you know, it’s nice to get a walk in,” Martin said. Something about this man made him very uncomfortable, and not in the normal way. His gaze fell on Martin with the same sort of creeping feeling he’d gotten from Jon, the sensation of being _seen_ rather than being looked at, except that this felt sharper and colder. Judging, rather than observing. 

Martin was being absolutely ridiculous. This was just a man at a desk, and he’d spoken all of two sentences to Martin. He couldn’t let his anxiety carry him so far away from the moment that he started making up entire personalities for people he’d never met.

Oh...well...Martin supposed he did that all the time anyway.

“I’ll be off, then,” he said, the same smile stuck on his face. “Enjoy.”

“Actually, if it’s not too much trouble,” Elias said. “Could you take a seat?”

Martin’s heart jumped into his throat. “I should really get back to the library. I’m still on duty, as it were.” A laugh, entirely unconvincing.

“I’m sure it will still be there. I’d only like to ask you a question or two. Nothing bad,” Elias said. “If you must go, however, I can’t stop you.”

“Um…is it library questions?”

Elias paused. “In a sense.”

The ominous answer wasn’t alleviating much of Martin’s discomfort. “Sure, I suppose.” He sat lightly on one of the two chairs facing Elias’s desk. “If it’s the inter-library loan rules, I can just pull up the website for you…”

“Not quite,” Elias said. “How do you like working at the library?”

The question took Martin aback. “Um, I suppose it’s fine? Pretty average.”

Elias hummed as though Martin had just supplied him with some interesting insight. “How long have you worked there?”

“Year-and-a-half,” Martin said. “Do you know someone who wants to...there’s hiring information on the university’s site.”

“I’m aware. How much would you say you’ve worked in research?”

The conversation was moving in a direction Martin had not imagined. “Uh, not...I mean sort of? I don’t know what you’d count as...maybe?”

“You’re good at organization.”

Moving even more rapidly away from him.. “I’m...what are you doing? What is this?”

Elias smiled, just as cool and slick as the rest of him. “A job interview.”

Martin sputtered. “Wait, what? I don’t...I’ve never...excuse me, _what?”_

“There is a vacancy for a research assistant, here at the Institute, and I’m not really one to waste time with a general employment application. Regular business hours, benefits, and likely more than you are making at the library,” Elias said. “I’ve done some asking around and your name came up as a recommendation.”

Martin was entirely beside himself. He was positive that he’d never been recommended for anything in his life. He just stared at Elias as his brain worked at warp speed, trying to figure out what the joke was. Had word of his awkward encounter in the Archives made it up here? Did people enjoy making him uncomfortable? Was there going to be some kind of hidden camera jumping out from behind one of the bookshelves? Was he being lured into a pyramid scheme?

Elias seemed amused, or did he? Was it Martin’s brain projecting that onto him? “No need to look so shocked, Mr. Blackwood. I was planning on mentioning a potential transfer to the University, but I happened to get lucky and have you come to me instead.”

“That’s...sorry if I...I mean, if I find it hard to believe,” Martin said. At the same time, some deep part of him, the part that craved approval, that sought it out at every turn, was starting to glow. He tried to push it down. He’d never gotten anything particularly good from hoping for it. “I’m just...I’m not even a librarian, so…”

“I’m not in the market for a librarian,” Elias said. He seemed entirely composed, and the unflinchingly serious edge to his voice was making Martin feel increasingly less like he was about to yell “sike” and laugh at him. “Our... _information storage_ , as it were, is quite the mess at present. I am looking for someone who is organizationally-minded and who, if I’m being honest, doesn’t mind a bit of busy work.”

Martin certainly was okay doing lots of fairly mundane work. When the library had an addition under construction, he was the one who offered to measure every single shelf in the stacks, to figure out how the books would be rearranged. It was numbers on top of numbers and Martin had thought his head was going to implode, but he’d stuck with it until the entire place was known down to the millimeter. He was the one who took on the data input for new books, boring as it was, when Isabelle didn’t want to, even if it took hours. 

The glow of hope only brightened. Maybe it wasn’t so incredibly far-fetched that Elias would have heard of him, if he’d been looking specifically at library staff in the area. It was still wildly improbable, but not impossible.

“I...could I have a bit of time to think about it?” Martin asked. “Also, you know, if...I’d have to give my week at the library, is what...not that I’m necessarily…”

Elias smiled. “Of course.”

“If this is real,” Martin finished lamely.

“I don’t have the time to put together pranks, Mr. Blackwood,” Elias said, though not harshly. “If you decide to join us, you can just go to Rosie and she’ll have an employment contract ready.” His eyes seemed to bore straight through Martin. “Don’t take too long, of course.”

“Right,” Martin said. “Um. _Right_ , yeah, of course.” He paused in the chair before realizing that he was being offered a dismissal. “I’ll let you know. Um. Thank you?”

“It’s no problem at all, Martin,” Elias said. “I look forward to hearing from you.”

Martin didn’t particularly like the way Elias said his name, but he didn’t dwell on it. His brain was still firing wildly and getting nowhere for it. He didn’t even really notice as he went to the elevator and rode back down to the lobby. 

Rosie smiled brightly as Martin approached the doors. “Thanks for coming by,” she said. Martin almost wanted to ask her if she knew that Elias was going to offer him a job, when she sent him up. It really didn’t matter, he supposed. He waved and said some kind of farewell.

The entire walk back to the library was surreal. Martin kept replaying the conversation, not entirely sure it had even happened. Step one: deliver books. Step two: meet Institute director. Step three: …? Step four: career change. 

All the way up the library steps he was braced for the other shoe to drop, for some cosmic force to remind him that he didn’t get strange opportunities like this. That wasn’t his place in the world. People didn’t recommend him for jobs. Unless the library was trying to get rid of him…? They could just as easily find another way to make him leave. Or maybe they thought he was useless, but felt sorry enough for him to just foist him onto someone else?

Or maybe it was all true, and Martin needed to stop kicking himself.

Isabelle must have seen the look on his face when he came back in, because she seemed concerned. 

“Got held up for a second,” Martin said, smiling reassuringly, or what he hoped was close to it. 

\--

Martin drew up a chart, because charts always made everything easier to understand. It sat on his coffee table and he stared at it.

One column labeled “Pros” and next to it “Cons.”

He started with the latter, because it was where his brain went anyway.

Cons to taking random jobs from people you’ve never met: He’d miss Isabelle. She’d have a harder time until they found a replacement. He was used to the library. It was comfortable. He’d already shown how awkward he was to some of the other employees of the Institute. He had no idea what the job would even entail, besides what he’d assumed about “busy work.” He really should have asked more questions. 

Pros to taking random jobs from people you’ve never met: Elias said it paid more. The bills from Martin’s mother’s assisted living home weren’t putting him out on the street just yet, but he was far from comfortable. Maybe the work would be more interesting, in terms of material. Maybe he’d have more coworkers, more potential people to talk to outside of his tiny circle. It would certainly be more fun to tell at parties. Maybe there would be more mobility.

But Martin realized that he hadn’t asked about how much the pay was. Why hadn’t he asked? He squinted at his list. He hadn’t asked anything, had he? He didn’t even know what specific position he was being offered. How had he not asked even the most fundamental questions? Where would the job be? What would he be doing? For how much? He hadn’t even gotten any contact information. Oh god, he’d really bungled this one up, hadn’t he? Martin sighed and squeezed his eyes shut, gripping his pen tightly in frustration. 

There was also one other matter. 

_Jon works there,_ he wrote under “Cons.” He looked at it for a long moment, and then crossed it out. _Jon works there,_ again, under “Pros” instead. He worked his tongue around his mouth as he processed. 

A third column, then. 

???: Jon works there. Maybe he can read minds. He’s cute. Martin already met him. Martin’s only interactions with him were either creepy or awkward on Martin’s part. Maybe they wouldn’t meet again at all. Maybe he’d work somewhere else entirely. Maybe he could see Jon at a meeting or something and he could apologize and he could do the cute little thing where he asked for them to start over and reintroduced himself, and Jon would laugh (has he ever laughed?) and they could be friends…

Martin shook his head and slapped his own forehead a few times. Now was not the time to go off on the wings of some fantasy about a man he’d met a total of three times. Each of those meetings had been tense at best. Just because Martin had been talking to him in his head for a month didn’t mean that he knew anything at all about Jon, apart from his name, and he hadn’t even known that the entire time. 

There was no reason for Martin to get so caught on that in the first place. 

He set his pen down and stared at the paper for a moment. He needed more information to make any kind of decision, before he left job security for something he hadn’t known was a possibility until earlier that day. He resolved to go back to the Institute on Monday and ask more questions. Get some concrete information about the position, what it would entail, what he’d have to do. Then he could make an informed decision.

\--

Despite the entire weekend he had to agonize over it, getting information was turning out to be easier than Martin thought it would be, because when he walked back into the Magnus Institute before heading to the library on Monday there was a small stack of papers ready for him at Rosie’s desk. Included was a full description of the position, “Library and Archival Assistant,” which mostly seemed to entail exactly what Elias had said it would: organization of books and files. There were a couple of other duties listed, which was good, because Martin wasn’t sure exactly how long he would be needed to organize things. That was, in itself, a finite job.

The pay was more, and thankfully very clearly stated. And, if Martin was honest, quite a bit more. Nothing insane, but the library had barely been enough to cover his rent, especially when most of it left his hands immediately. His peppermint tea at the coffee shop where he’d seen Jon was really his only splurge. Seeing the number on the paper was making Martin’s hand itch, even though he knew he couldn’t just sign something immediately. Or, rather, he _could_ , but it didn’t seem like the adult thing to do.

He was still in a bit of disbelief, but the more he read the very real paper in his hands, very definitely meant for him, with what seemed to be an actual concrete job on it, the harder it was to hold onto his skepticism. Maybe he could have this one thing. Maybe he was actually getting an opportunity, for once. 

“Let me know when you’re all set, love,” Rosie said warmly. Martin smiled back at her, taking the papers and clipboard she had given him and finding a couple of armchairs against the other wall. The lobby seemed especially cavernous. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen anyone but Rosie and himself there.

Which was a silly thing to think, because this was only his third time in the building. He was sure that if he came during lunch hours, or right at the beginning or end of the day, he’d see lots of other people. Who definitely worked here. This was an entire Institute, not just a lobby and a basement and a third floor director’s office. 

He did his best not to chew on the end of the pen Rosie had given him. He read and re-read the information, looked over the employment form, and re-read the description again. It all seemed in order. Suspiciously so. 

No! Not suspiciously. Of course it would be in order, this was a professional place. Martin had to keep his anxiety in check. 

He knew there was something in him, behind his hesitance, that had been growing. It had been growing for a while, in the background of his normal routine, only getting stronger the more he felt suffocated by bills and library patrons and expectations. His life was so average, maybe a little bit sad, no matter what he did, and underneath that he wanted to...to _do_ something. To do something unexpected. To do something impulsive.

He’d thought that it might result in him dyeing his hair or wearing a particularly bright print, or maybe taking an unplanned day trip, but now he felt that urge swelling in him as he looked at the line on the employment form where his signature could so easily go. Did normal people take this long to make decisions like this? People who weren’t plagued by anxiety and low self-esteem?

Martin took a steeling breath. He didn’t re-read the description. He swallowed and lifted his pen and thought of how he’d phrase his resignation from the library.

He signed his name. 

Air left him in a rush and he stared down at his own signature. There. Step one. Step two was to stand, to walk over to Rosie’s desk, to hand the papers to her. To watch her read them over, eyebrows popping up happily. To have her thank him and leave a message on Elias’s office phone. 

She smiled at him and he smiled back and he felt some kind of giddiness. He’d done it. Rosie said that he’d be getting an email soon to figure out scheduling. Then Martin went to the doors in a bit of a daze. He was sure that Isabelle would be happy for him, if not a little annoyed. 

Suddenly, a flash of motion by his legs and he yelped. A large dog shot past him through the open door--the door he was _holding open_ , straight into the lobby behind him. 

“Oh, Christ,” Martin yelped. 

The dog bounced around excitedly, leash trailing behind it. The owner nearly ran into Martin as she came running in after it, apologies spilling from her almost incoherently. It was all very sudden and very loud, the loudest Martin had ever heard the room. 

“I’m so sorry,” the owner breathed, a young woman with big glasses, who looked like she’d been running for quite a while. “Baron!” she yelled sharply. The dog acted like it couldn’t hear her at all.

Somehow, though Martin didn’t know how, the door to the emergency stairs was propped open, and the dog found it almost immediately. The owner’s voice jumped about an octave as the dog--Baron?--pushed against it and disappeared into the stairwell.

“I’ve got it,” Martin said before even realizing he was speaking. He worked there now, didn’t he? He was always too quick to help, he could hear Isabelle saying. It didn’t matter.

He opened the door to the stairwell--no dog. He sighed sharply. He could hear the jingling of the dog’s collar and leash. Down? It sounded like the dog had gone down.

Martin tapped down the stairs as quickly as he could, just in time to hear what sounded suspiciously like the door to the next level clicking shut. The door had a bar--could the dog have pushed it? It seemed like this dog was very good at what it did. 

He burst through the door after it, looking around the hall a bit frantically. No sign of the dog. Of course. Then, so suddenly that he jumped about a foot in the air, he felt a _whoosh_ by his leg again. His heart dropped in an instant as he saw the dog dart around from behind him and through the door. The door _he’d opened_. Oh god. 

“You crafty little…” Martin muttered. At least now he had a sight on the dog. It was big and very fluffy. A standard poodle? Martin only knew approximately four different kinds of dogs. 

He came in after the dog, hands outstretched in case he could snag the leash. The hall opened to an office, and Martin had a moment of panic as he realized where they were. 

The Archives. Of course.

There were a couple of other doors he hadn’t really paid attention to when he’d come to not-give his statement, besides Jon’s office door, and, oh of _course_ , one of them was wide open. This was the kind of thing that could only happen to Martin, to be met by the world’s smartest, luckiest dog.

Sasha was at her desk, and she jumped up as the dog darted past, followed closely by Martin. 

“What’s--Martin Blackwood?”

“Dog,” he said intelligently.

“I can see that!” Sasha replied, bewildered. 

“It just got in, I’m…” Martin found himself a bit out of breath already.

“Oh shit, it’s in the--” Sasha started. She took off after it, through the open door. 

Then, because Martin was the _luckiest_ man in the world, Jon’s office door opened.

“What on earth is going on out here?” Jon asked, looking exhausted and exasperated and stern, like a schoolteacher.

Martin’s mouth opened and closed. “There’s a dog,” he said. 

Jon blinked. “A dog.”

“It ran…” Martin started, glancing toward the door. He couldn’t hear any sounds of abject destruction, but he also had no idea where the door went.

“You let a _dog_ into my _archives_?” Jon snapped, eyes flaring. 

“No, I didn’t, I mean, I guess I...I opened the...but it’s not _my_ …” Martin was going to lose his mind, right here and now, in the Archives of the Magnus Institute. 

“Well, are you going to get it?” Jon asked, looking like he was seconds from banishing Martin to the underworld. 

“I--yes!” Martin squeaked, following Sasha through the door. The room beyond was very large and not especially well-lit, and it was filled with about a million cardboard boxes stacked on metal shelves. He heard some distant jingling and was crossing every mental finger he could muster that the dog hadn’t already started destroying things, or he’d have to leave his new position immediately and move to Norway. 

He turned a corner, heart thumping wildly and thoughts a mess, to find the dog--

Sitting happily on the floor, tail thumping on the floor and collar jingling as Tim scratched it. Sasha stood next to him, massaging her temple with two fingers.

Martin’s entire body deflated like an old helium balloon. He let out all of the air he’d ever breathed in his life and slumped against a shelf. Tim looked up, eyes bright and a bit mischievous. 

“Not that I don’t love the gift, but something tells me this friend isn’t supposed to be here,” he said. “Oh, hi Martin.”

Martin closed his eyes and forced a smile. “Not my dog, I promise,” he said. “Um...we should probably get it...out.”

“Oh, definitely,” Tim said, not pausing in his enthusiastic petting. The dog’s head lolled back and looked at Martin.

“Well, I’m glad one of us is enjoying themselves,” Martin said, glowering at the dog. Tim laughed. 

“I really needed the heart attack,” Sasha said. “Jon is going to have a fit.”

“Oh, he, um…” Martin started. “Already has, I think.”

Sasha rolled her eyes. “Lovely.”

“Okay, big boy,” Tim said affectionately as he stood, leash in hand. “Time to send you home.”

The three of them left the large storage room--if Martin had to guess, likely the proverbial “archives,” and stepped back out into the Archival Office. Jon was standing there, looking sharply down at the dog as Tim led it in with them. The dog’s owner was also there, and she rushed forward, thanking Tim (and Martin, sort of as an afterthought) profusely. The dog’s tail wagged like it was having the best day of its life.

The owner, still apologizing on constant loop, led the dog down the hall. The moment the door to the stairwell closed, Jon’s eyes shut and he let out a tense breath.

“I’m sorry,” Martin started in immediately, “It wasn’t mine...I mean, of course, you could see...but I didn’t mean to...it’s a very...um...smart dog.”

Jon cracked his eyes open to gaze balefully at Martin, who felt himself wither. “Ah, right, of course, a _smart dog,_ so smart that I suppose it tricked you into letting it run wild in my archives, where it could have _destroyed_ some very old and very _valuable_ documents.”

“Seemed like a good dog to me, boss,” Tim said. Jon looked like he was seconds from detonating.

Then the elevator down the hall beeped and Martin could hear the doors opening. Jon paused whatever tirade he was preparing to watch as Elias strode down the hall, appearing austerely in the doorway. He was smiling that cool smile that Martin had seen the day before. His suit was as crisp as the look in his eyes.

“Seems that it’s been an exciting day in the Archives,” he said. “I hope nothing is too out of order.”

“Fortunately,” Jon said dryly.

“Ah, Martin,” Elias said. “Just who I was looking for. You always seem to appear right where I need you.”

Jon’s eyes snapped over to Martin, narrowed momentarily, and then blew wide. Martin froze. He didn’t know what to say or do. He might have smiled, but he was shaking with adrenaline from the dog and it was hard to tell. “That’s me,” he said.

“I’m so happy you’ve decided to join us,” Elias continued. Tim grunted some kind of questioning noise, looking at Martin. Oh dear, now everyone was looking at Martin, weren’t they?

“Yeah,” he said.

Jon’s incredulousness and silent fury redirected to Elias, but he didn’t say anything. 

“It’s convenient for you to have found yourself here,” Elias said. “I told you that our storage is really out of sorts, and I’m afraid the worst offender has to be the Archives.”

“That’s not…” Jon started, but stopped himself halfway, looking like he might have bitten his own tongue. 

“Oh,” Martin said, still frozen.

Oh. _Oh._ Oh god. He couldn’t read, could he? He was so dumb. So, so stupid. _Library and Archival Assistant._ It had _archive_ right in the name. Of course he’d be sent to work in the Archives, where he was now certain that Jon’s casual derision had turned into actual hate. Of course this would be his life. Of course this would be the result of his impulsive choices. 

“Whoa, Martin,” Tim said, but it sounded like it was with a smile. “Joining the team, eh?”

“I know you’ve been in the market for a third assistant,” Elias said, this time to Jon, who almost seemed to be vibrating at this point. 

“I’ve said no such thing,” Jon said, as diplomatically as it seemed he was able at the moment.

“Martin will be helping bring some order. I know that Ms. Robinson’s filing system was a bit--”

“Nonexistent,” Sasha supplied. 

Elias didn’t seem too bothered by having been spoken over, or if he was he didn’t show it. “ _Unorthodox,_ ” he said. “I think having a dedicated assistant will make the entire organization process much easier.”

“How thoughtful,” Jon gritted out. 

Martin was ready for the fires of hell to finally claim him. He imagined that liquefying on the spot would be less painful than to just be standing there, the center of attention and a target of the exhausted infuriation radiating off of Jon. 

“Mr. Blackwood will likely be starting work next week,” Elias said. “I’m glad you’ve all had the opportunity to meet first.” His smile was entirely composed.

“Yup, nice to meet you all,” Martin squeaked. He needed to move. To get away, to run as fast as he could to the coast, get on the first boat he saw, row to the Arctic, set himself upon an ice floe, and die of exposure, because that would be infinitely more pleasant than being in this room. “See you next week,” he said quickly. “I’ve um, I’ve got to…I have to go to the...I can’t be late, you know, so…” He swallowed. “Thanks,” to Elias. “Sorry,” to Jon. “Thanks,” again, to Tim and Sasha. “Sorry,” to everyone one more time.

He walked as fast as wouldn’t seem impossibly rude. Elias let him by, still smiling that calm, calculating smile. “I’ll contact you,” he said as Martin passed. Martin couldn’t stand to wait for the elevator, so he took the stairs. 

As the door closed behind him, he heard Jon’s voice, sharply, “Elias, I think we need to have a chat.”

Then, “I’m afraid I’m really quite busy--” _click._

Martin needed to sleep for the rest of his life.


	3. Weird Things Jon Has Done.docx

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to go back and listen to some baby S1 Jon to remember how mean he was lmao

Martin didn’t really have any friends he could call up and talk to. It had always been a fantasy of his, to have a group of friends he could ask to come over when he was feeling bad, with whom he could watch a movie or play some game, who could make him feel better. He recognized that it only being a wish of his was very sad, and then he thought that his entire life was a bit sad, and it only made his mood worse.

He curled up on his sofa with a blanket and a mug of herbal tea on his coffee table, watching a cooking competition programme of some kind and feeling sorry for himself. Whatever neutral but awkward impression Jon may have had of him was now definitely gone, in favor of realizing how incompetent and strange Martin was. 

And they were going to be _working together_. Martin had already signed the employment form, and he’d still given the library notice that he would be leaving, but it had been in a bit of a haze. Isabelle had been understandably surprised and she’d seemed a bit sad. Another wonderful Blackwood disappointment.

It wasn’t like the dog had been Martin’s fault. In fact, he was just trying to help clean up someone else’s mess. Jon was wrong to blame him for it. And yet Martin still felt an almost painful pang of embarrassment when he thought of Jon’s furious face.

It had all turned out fine, though, hadn’t it? Mostly. Besides the mood he’d left Jon in, everyone else seemed perfectly happy to have him there. If it was only Jon who was the problem, then Martin could probably avoid him as well as possible and it wouldn’t be too bad. He thought that he’d like to talk to Sasha and Tim more. They seemed fun. 

At the same time, Martin wasn’t sure he wanted someone who didn’t like him to have access to the inside of his head.

Martin sighed sharply and pulled the blanket over his head. He squeezed his eyes shut. He needed to stop being a ridiculous child about this. Jon could not read his mind. That wasn’t possible. He’d gotten some silly idea in his brain and it had taken off on its own, turning into a thing that he’d somehow started to believe. 

Jon could not read his mind.

Jon was a normal person, if not a bit of an arse, and he could _not_ read minds.

Martin needed to stop being weird about it. Maybe if he could keep his head down and do whatever organizational work was needed, Jon would eventually simmer down and they could have a perfectly cordial work relationship.

Why did Martin care so much? Jon was one man. He didn’t even know his full name. Martin was an adult. He could deal with an awkward work situation like an _adult_.

Anyway, he had a week. Elias had, true to his word, sent Martin an email with lots of the nuts and bolts of working there. He’d have to get some more forms in. The hours were 9-5, as standard as it got. On his first day Rosie would walk him through payroll. He was to report to the Archives, and the other assistants would be able to give him more information on what exactly he would be _organizing_. Filing, mostly. Martin was okay with filing. 

Jon or not, Martin would be making more money, and his life in general would be more comfortable. Elias hadn’t asked for any references or a CV, which was definitely suspicious, but then again if Martin was taken on recommendation…? Everything about this was weird.

Martin thought he might need a little weird. 

He resolved two things, as he sat there under his blanket with the sound of desserts being quietly made: one, that come next week he would act as though he’d never been to the Archives before. A fresh start.

Two: he wasn’t going to think about it until then.

\--

There were shelves upon shelves filled with boxes filled with folders filled with paper, and as Martin stood in the storage area a week later he wondered if maybe he should have taken a better look when he’d gone in after the dog.

“So these are all the statements,” Sasha said, and she looked a bit sad for him. “There’s, I don’t know, thousands. Gertrude--oh, she was the Head Archivist before Jon, Gertrude Robinson--she didn’t exactly have the best filing system.”

“I can see,” Martin said apprehensively.

“No, this isn’t even it. The boxes are fine. I mean, we don’t pull a lot of them out, except with the digitization we’re doing now.” Sasha knelt to a box by her feet, brushed some dust off the top, and opened it. “What I’m talking about is more…”

She pulled out a couple of folders and handed them to Martin. He blinked at her. “What?”

“What are the case numbers on those?” Sasha had a few folders of her own and flipped each open briefly.

“Um…” Martin bit his lip and checked. “9930208...0152301...9991201... _ah_.”

“Yep. Seems completely nonsensical. I’ve got 0031406 here.”

“Right.”

“Yeah.”

“So what’s...I get that they’re all mixed up but what was the original system supposed to be?” Martin asked. Sasha shrugged.

“I think it was ‘no.’”

“Pardon?”

“You look at some files and think about organizing them and then say ‘no,’” Sasha explained. Martin snorted and grimaced at the folders in his hands. 

“And so Mr. Sims wants me to--”

“Oh, oh god, please do _not_ call him that,” Sasha complained, tossing her folders back into the box. “It’s the one thing we can do to keep him from actually ossifying at his desk from stodginess. Jon is Jon.”

Martin put his hands up in surrender. “Right. Um. So _Jon_ wants me to...organize these? How, exactly? Like what system?”

Sasha shrugged again. “The thing is, I don’t really think he cares. If you can figure out the one Gertrude used then power to you, but honestly just putting everything in chronological order would do absolute wonders.”

“Great,” Martin said, looking a bit sternly at the room. It wasn’t especially well-lit, so he thought he might bring a lamp in with him at some point.

“Okay, well, anyway, I have stuff to get done so I’m just gonna leave you to your new domain,” Sasha said, if not a bit sympathetically. “If you have any questions, Tim and I are always right out there.”

Martin thanked her and sighed, and as the door closed behind her he wondered if it was still too late to call up the library and tell them he was just joking. He supposed that there was no use in starting out the job with a bad attitude. Maybe once Elias figured out that he had other skills (Martin desperately hoped he had other skills) he’d get to do something more interesting. Then again, this seemed to fit the description he was given exactly, so maybe this would be it.

He sat down cross-legged in front of the box Sasha had been ruffling through. As good a place to start as any. Maybe it would be kind of nice to have some methodical work to do. It would give him some time to think, anyway. And if he wanted reading material he had it all around him, as long as he was in a Halloween-type mood.

Martin started taking out files, checking their dates, and putting them into piles by year. He only read the first few lines of each, in case there was something particularly interesting, but besides “demon-possessed” swans attacking people in parks and a clock someone found in storage that still had the correct time, nothing jumped out to him. 

He’d made his way through the entire first box before he’d realized. Maybe this wouldn’t go as slowly as it seemed. He didn’t have any particular place to put the files, and he did have about thirty different piles, some with only a folder or two, but if he could find a couple more empty boxes he could figure it out. 

A job with such supernatural content was surprisingly mundane, he thought.

He’d done what he considered to be an excellent job of avoiding Jon when he’d come in that morning. Once he was done with the red tape he still had to cross--forms and more forms--it had been about noon, and he’d descended to the Archives with the determination to figure out where Jon was and put himself somewhere else entirely.

He wasn’t planning on avoiding Jon forever--according to Elias, Jon was now technically his immediate boss, so he couldn’t--but he didn’t want his first day at a new job to involve him making a fool of himself in front of someone who didn’t seem to like him. Luckily for him, Jon was apparently a shut-in who stayed in his office all day, so Martin had no problem coming in to set up his desk and get Sasha to show him what he was supposed to do.

Martin leaned over to drag another box toward him. He did the same as with the first, separating folders into piles by year, and then he took another box off of a shelf to work through it as well. Not the most advanced filing system, but having any kind of organization would be nice. And, since Martin had been given little direction, he couldn’t be blamed if the filing system wasn’t exactly what anyone wanted. 

Specifically Jon, if he even cared.

Speaking of Jon--not that Martin had really _stopped_ \--maybe avoidance wouldn’t produce the best result. Maybe a peace offering of some kind would work. Maybe Martin was overreacting, like he did about everything, and Jon hadn’t even thought of him for the past week, and by now he’d forgotten about the entire incident.

Either way, there was a small kitchenette just off of the main office, and Martin knew he’d seen a kettle. He checked his phone and found that he’d been working for almost two hours already. He’d gotten into a rhythm, and now it worked out that it was just the right time for him to go make some tea. Maybe he could ask if anyone else wanted some, and ingratiate himself that way. 

He gathered up the piles he’d created and put them back into the boxes as carefully as he could, to make sure the year divisions stayed. Maybe he could make some dividing markers. And then some labels on the shelving, like the library stacks, to make everything easier to find. He seemed to be the only one sent to work on this, so he might as well make it his own project.

The light in the main office was enough to make Martin squint when he reemerged. Tim waved.

“Good to see you didn’t get eaten by one of the boxes,” he said. “How’s the impossible task so far?”

“Not completely impossible,” Martin said. “Might take a good while, though.”

“You’re a braver man than me.”

“Someone has to be patient around here,” Sasha said. Martin smiled.

“Um, I actually came back out to ask if there’s any tea,” he said. “And if anyone would like some.”

“Did Elias hire an angel?” Tim asked. Martin choked a little but hid it. 

“There’s plenty,” Sasha said, smiling in that nice in-joke way. “Last wall cabinet on the left.” 

“How do you take it?” Martin asked, pointing between the two of them.

Tim was “bit of sugar” and Sasha was “anything’s fine.” Martin went to the kitchenette with an unfamiliar little glow in his chest. He could make friends and be helpful. He’d always liked doing these sorts of little things for people, tiny favors that made their days better. His mother was not generally the most receptive audience for it, which was complicated by the fact that she had been the only one he interacted with enough to help, at least before she moved to assisted living. Tim and Sasha, however, had smiled at him and thanked him and for the first time in a while Martin felt appreciated.

He wasn’t going to dwell on how sad it was that his new coworkers saying “yes, you can make me tea” was enough to give him all of these warm fuzzies. 

He wasn’t sure how Jon would like his tea, if he wanted any at all. Martin was fairly sure he’d ordered only coffee at the cafe. That didn’t mean he didn’t _like_ tea, of course. Maybe he’d like the variety. Hopefully he’d at least see the good will behind it.

The bubbling of the kettle and the _click_ as it turned off told him that he’d have to decide. He pulled four mugs from the cabinet Sasha had mentioned, along with a couple of boxes of tea bags. He hadn’t asked about type, so he figured the first black tea he saw would work fine. 

A few minutes later he walked out with two of the mugs, placing each delicately on an unoccupied space on Sasha and Tim’s desks. When they thanked him it only strengthened the warmth and glow, and Martin found himself having to bite back his smile before it got so big as to be creepy. 

When he returned from the kitchenette with another mug, making for Jon’s door, Tim coughed.

“Not sure that’s the best idea,” he said. 

“Why?” Martin wasn’t so happy to have the confidence he’d been trying to bolster for at least five minutes knocked down.

“He’s not keen on being interrupted, generally,” Tim said, and it sounded a bit tense, like he was trying not to say something else.

“I can take it in,” Sasha offered. Martin furrowed his brow.

“Why would it matter who brings it to him?” he asked.

“It...doesn’t,” Sasha said. Martin stared down at the cup in his hands for a long moment.

“I get that he doesn’t like me, if that’s what this is about,” he said, sounding more matter-of-fact to his own ears than he felt.

“That’s not…” Tim started. “I mean, I don’t know if I’d say _necessarily_ that he…” He didn’t seem to know how to end the sentence, instead offering a cautiously fake smile.

Martin sighed. “If he shouts me out of the room I’ll accept all ‘told-you-so’s. What, has he been bad-mouthing me for the past week?”

Neither Tim nor Sasha spoke. Martin felt a pang of anxiety, but he pushed it down with a breath. Though he’d promised himself not to think about the Dog Disaster, he had done anyway, and had, fortunately, decided that he hadn’t done anything wrong. Thinking about it, he’d become more concerned that Jon might have something else going on that made him so irritable. 

“It was really more about the _concept_ of having a third assistant?” Sasha said. “And that he may...not have been informed. And really mostly about Elias. Honestly, it’s pretty typical Jon stuff.”

“Bit of a control freak,” Tim added.

“Right, well. I don’t want this to get cold,” Martin said, and then, before he could lose the nerve, he knocked firmly on Jon’s door.

A pause, and then a muffled, _“Come in.”_

Martin’s heart jumped into his throat at the sound of Jon’s curt voice. He gave a quick _here-we-go_ smile to Tim and Sasha, and then opened the door.

Jon was at his desk, which was absolutely covered in paper and folders. His laptop was balanced precariously right at the edge, and immediately upon entering Martin could see at least three different tape recorders. There were boxes along the walls, along with bookshelves full of the same kinds of folders Martin had been digging through in storage. 

“What do you want, Martin?” Jon asked dryly, without looking up. 

Martin reminded himself that Jon could not read his mind.

“I brought, um…” Martin gestured to the mug in his hand. 

Jon waved his hand, writing with the other. “Just put it here.”

He still hadn’t looked up. Martin took a breath. Jon could not read his mind.

“Right, then,” Martin said, hurrying to Jon’s desk and setting the mug down on the first uncovered place he saw. “Here you go.”

Jon didn’t respond. Martin lingered for a moment, biting his lip. There was silence for a few seconds, save for the scratching of Jon’s pen and the quiet slide of paper. It would almost be peaceful, were it not for the way Martin’s knees locked up when he saw Jon.

Jon paused and finally looked up. “Can I help you?” he asked thinly.

“What? Oh! No. I was just. Nothing,” Martin said quickly. “Zoning out, you know. I’ll just go.”

“You aren’t getting paid to make tea and hover,” Jon intoned. Martin’s chest tightened uncomfortably and he nodded.

“Yeah. Sorry. First day and all. Anyway. I’ll stop bothering you.”

Martin made for the door, mouth pulled into a thin line. Jon didn’t say anything as he left. 

As he clicked the door shut behind him, he let out a breath and then shot a covert thumbs-up to Tim and Sasha. He hadn’t gotten yelled at, and if anything Jon had just seemed distracted. He hadn’t really expected a thank you, so that didn’t bother him. 

“Survived the lion’s den,” Tim said. 

“It wasn’t that bad at all,” Martin said. He hadn’t realized how tense he’d been, and now it was starting to seep out of him. He nodded, mostly to himself. “Besides how he usually seems to be. Right, then.”

He ducked back into the document storage after another minute or so of small talk and returned to where he’d started. He dragged over some other boxes, rifling through them and pulling out statements to sort. 1995, 1981, 2012. Jon had probably heard his voice through the door, and that’s how he knew that it was Martin without looking up. And why would Martin have been there if he weren’t bringing Jon something? It made sense.

There were always rational explanations for things. Wasn’t that the whole point of this Institute? To debunk the supernatural?

Martin wasn’t actually sure, come to think of it. Did they believe in ghosts, Tim, Sasha, and Jon? Elias was the head of the Institute but he seemed so no-nonsense that it was hard to believe that he’d take any of it seriously. But, then again, why would they work here if they didn’t think any of it was true? Martin didn’t even know what he thought “it” was. Ghosts? Monsters? Superpowers? Great Old Ones, ready to subjugate the world?

Martin was so lost in thought that it took him until he was halfway through the box to realize that he’d left his tea on the counter by the kettle.

\--

It became somewhat of a routine. In the mid-afternoon Martin would leave document storage and make tea for everyone. The second day he did it, he saw that the mug he’d given Jon was still in the same spot on the corner of his desk, still full. Martin didn’t know why he did it, but instead of saying anything about it he just crept quietly into Jon’s office, switched it with a new cup, and left. Jon barely acknowledged that he was there.

After a few days, Sasha pointed out that Martin could just as easily take boxes of statements with him into the office proper and organize them at the empty desk, instead of on the floor and other convenient surfaces in the storage room. Martin felt a bit silly for not having thought of it himself. It was certainly a lot less lonely, with Tim and Sasha chatting and making the occasional quip to him. It felt nice.

They were in and out of the office more than Martin expected them to be, for an archiving job. They seemed to be doing actual research on top of the digitization project, and they’d reference people Jon had asked them to speak to and places they’d gone to gather information. It seemed as though, along with being in charge of collection of statements, the Archives was in charge of the majority of the follow-up as well. 

Jon would occasionally emerge from his office looking weary but stern, and would give more assignments. Martin wasn’t sure he ever heard Jon ask them about any of what they’d found in their research, but he assumed they were sending him reports. Jon would sometimes glance over at Martin, analyze the boxes and statements around him, and roll his eyes. 

Once he snapped at Martin for putting statements on the floor, and then again once for having his tea too close to his elbow when there were statements on his desk. 

“Last three digits of the year, then day, then month,” he said as he passed one day. 

Martin blinked and looked down at the piles of folders he’d been separating and then up at Jon. “Yeah, got that,” he said, waiting to see if there was something else. He’d been staring at hundreds of statements and after a while he’d put two and two together between the normal dates printed and the case numbers affixed to the top in letter tape. “Do you know what the letters mean?” They only popped up occasionally.

“Nothing important.”

Martin wasn’t sure he agreed, given that they were on more than one statement and sometimes the letters were the same, but he didn’t press it.

“How often are they the same?” Jon asked. Demanded, maybe, since that was more the tone he used on Martin.

“What?” Martin asked. 

“The…” Jon paused for a moment, eyes flashing like he was realizing something, and he straightened a little. “The letters. Have you noticed them recurring?”

“Yeah, but I haven’t, um, counted,” Martin said. “If you want me to I can--”

“Never mind, I’m wasting time,” Jon said, turning suddenly away. Martin decided very firmly that Jon’s dismissal didn’t hurt (and he was almost able to believe it) so he just filed it under _Weird Things Jon Has Done_ and let it be. He did take out a pad of paper and start marking down when he saw the same letter combinations. 

Occasionally Jon would drink the tea Martin had brought, which Martin would only discover when he came in the next day to offer another mug. Jon hadn’t mentioned anything about it, and Martin kept bringing the tea. 

One day, as Martin carefully walked a mug of tea over to Jon’s door, Tim waved him over and shook his head. After the first day neither Tim nor Sasha had tried to stop Martin from going in, though they’d made it clear that they thought he was wasting his time, however nice the gesture might be. Jon just didn’t respond to normal human interactions like that.

Martin paused, raising his eyebrows.

“Elias is in there,” Tim whispered, eyeing the door. “Don’t want to interrupt, I think. For your own sake.”

Martin grimaced. “Well, that’s, um...unfortunate.”

He lingered by the door, trying to decide whether to keep the tea with him in case Elias left soon, so he could bring it in to Jon, or if it would take too long and it would be cold.

_“I can’t keep picking up after you like this.”_

Martin froze, ears focusing without realizing. He could hear through the door, though it was heavily muffled. He swallowed. He shouldn’t be eavesdropping.

 _“Then don’t,”_ Martin heard Jon say, bone dry.

 _“You weren’t going to do anything about it,”_ Elias replied firmly. _“I’m giving you a learning opportunity.”_

 _“I had it under control,”_ Jon said. _“All you’ve_ given _me is a new headache.”_

_“Oh, please, Jon, stop acting like I’ve planted a bomb in the Archives. He’s thoroughly harmless.”_

_“If you thought he was harmless, you wouldn’t have dumped him onto me,”_ Jon said.

Martin could feel his stomach starting to drop. He gripped the handle of the mug tightly.

_“Harmless in that nothing bad will befall the Archives from his presence. Out of our control, significantly less harmless. Which, may I remind you, is your own fault. I am simply running damage control.”_

Martin should have stopped listening. He should have walked away from the door and sat back down at his desk and kept sorting statements. Tim was watching him.

_“I may have made a mistake--”_

_“One mistake is all it takes, Jon,”_ Elias said.

 _“He has nothing,”_ Jon shot back. _“And now...oh, of course he is.”_

There was a pause. Then more speaking, but it was clipped and too quiet for Martin to make out. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears. Then footsteps, and before Martin had time to react there was a click and the door opened. He jolted, the tea sloshing around in the mug, and withered back as Elias appeared in the doorway.

“Just, um, thought I’d...sorry, didn’t know you were…” he tried. Elias’s eyes flicked down to the mug, which now had a bit of tea dripping down the side and onto the carpet, and he smiled.

“Excuse me.”

He continued across the office and down the hall. Tim’s eyes were wide and he pulled his lips in, looking only about halfway as though he were about to burst into laughter. 

“Martin,” Jon said, and Martin jolted again.

“Yeah?” Martin squeaked, daring to glance into Jon’s office. 

“Come here for a moment.”

Oh god. Martin steeled himself, tried to pause the part of his brain that was processing the conversation he’d just heard, and nodded. He stepped into the room with a deep breath.

“Close the door.”

Martin was about to be brutally murdered and it was all because he’d thought it would be nice to bring Jon some tea. As the door clicked shut behind him he thought that maybe he should put down the tea before Jon pulled out his ceremonial sword and ran him through.

Jon looked at the tea and sighed deeply. He still hadn’t pulled the lever that would drop Martin into a pit of spikes, so Martin thought it might be safe to put the tea on his desk. He noticed a drip right as it fell.

“Ah, sorry, I’m just a little clumsy, is all…” He wiped the side of the mug with his sleeve, feeling a little hysterical. There was already tea on his trouser leg as well, he could feel, so he figured it didn’t matter. “What did you, um, want to see me for?”

“Eavesdropping?” Jon said. Martin nodded, entirely unable to meet Jon’s eyes.

“Well, I mean...”

“Is there something in particular you were aiming to hear?”

“What? Oh, no. I was just. Tea.”

“If I’m going to be stuck with you in the Archives…” Jon closed his eyes. “If you are going to be _working_ in the Archives long-term, there are things about this place that you will need to know and rules that must be followed.”

“Yeah.”

Silence, again. Painful. Jon opened his mouth as though he were going to say something else, and Martin wasn’t exactly _watching_ him, but he could see enough of his face to see a certain strange kind of concentration.

“You already…” Jon started. There was a sudden moment of what almost looked like panic, and then Jon quickly snapped his mouth shut and started rearranging things on his desk.

“I have an assignment for you,” he said crisply.

Martin blinked. Processed. “What?”

Jon gave Martin a skeptical, if not slightly tense look. “Tim and Sasha are both busy, and I need some follow-up done on a statement. Unless that’s too _difficult_ for you.” He was speaking very quickly.

Martin had never had the feeling of so many conversations going wildly off-course in such a short time frame. Wasn’t he going to be yelled at? Wasn’t Jon going to tell him that he hadn’t heard anything, or tell him to move back into storage to sort files? 

“Oh, um, no,” Martin said. “I just, you know…” He didn’t know what to think. “Elias said that I’d just be doing...organization, right?”

“If he doesn’t want me to be treating you like a true assistant, then he should move you to the library,” Jon said. Martin swallowed.

“Yeah, okay,” he said. “I’m not sure that’s how that...I mean, yeah, I can do it, I guess. Um, what is it?”

Jon gathered up some paper and shoved it unceremoniously into a folder, holding it out to Martin. “Read through this statement, and then I’d like you to go investigate the flat in which this all happened. Speak to the current tenants, get a sense of the layout of the building, and look out for any...abnormal occurrences.”

“Abnormal occurrences,” Martin echoed, taking the folder and trying to catch up. “What sort of…”

“You’ll know what to look for once you’ve read that,” Jon said. “Now, go ahead.”

Martin paused, looking down at the folder. “Alright.”

“And I trust we don’t need to have a conversation about eavesdropping,” Jon continued, a bit dangerously. 

“Nope,” Martin said. “None at all.”

He took a deep breath and left, wondering as the door closed behind him how many times he was going to be caught completely off guard before he finally gave up and stopped trying to follow the logical progression of conversations around this place. 

“How’d it go?” Tim asked.

“Surprisingly fine?” Martin said. “I mean...he gave me a statement to look at and told me not to eavesdrop, but other than that…”

Tim snorted. “He told you not to eavesdrop?” he asked. “Wait. That’s seriously what he told you?”

“Yeah?”

“Oh my god, that’s rich,” Tim said, grinning. “Absolutely bonkers. Coming from _him_.”

“Is it something he does a lot?” Martin asked as he sat at his desk, opening the folder.

Tim had an inside-joke smile on his face, and it wasn’t exactly the same friendly kind that Sasha had. Not unfriendly, just a bit like Martin wasn’t the one in on the joke with him. “Oh, he has a problem, I’d say. Real nosy.”

Martin hadn’t gotten that impression, given how little Jon left his office. Unless.

“You wouldn’t happen to mean in a more...um…” Martin started. “I guess, _spooky_ way, would you?”

Tim glanced at Jon’s door. “Depends on what you’d call spooky, I think.”

Martin bit his lip. “Do you remember when I came in the first time, to give a statement?”

“Definitely.”

“Well, so then you remember that it was about a...a ‘suspected mi--’”

Jon’s door opened suddenly and Martin jumped in his chair. Jon strode out and Martin’s jaw clicked shut. 

“Tim, did you send me your report on the Popham case?” he asked briskly. Tim’s eyebrows jumped up.

“Yeah, sent it yesterday. Didn’t you get the recording?”

“I...yes, I did. I was just wondering, in case there was anything else you may have…” Jon’s jaw worked and he looked like he was thinking. “Given how you came across it I’m sure you know the worth of _discretion_.”

Tim’s mouth formed a neat “o” and he glanced at Martin. “Yeah, definitely. Discretion.” His look of mild surprise was replaced with a sneaky smile. “I’m just an open book, you know me. Don’t see why someone wouldn’t want to give the full report.”

“Yes, well, there are always reasons,” Jon said. Martin was not following the conversation at all. It was strange for Jon to come out and ask directly about the assignments he gave.

“Well, it’s all in there but no sign of the sister and no one planning on going in to check,” Tim said. “Recording’s it. Police aren’t very interested. Not really a missing person so much as a missing corpse, they reckon.”

“Right,” Jon said. “Right.” He cleared his throat. “I’m going to check something in Artifact Storage. I’ll be back soon. Carry on.”

He turned on his heel and his shoes tapped down the hallway. Martin watched him go. Tim went back to his computer, biting back a smile.

Martin looked down at the folder in front of him. Another bookmark for _Weird Things Jon Has Done._ Maybe at some point he’d have to go through the file and try to make connections, but for now it was easier to pack it away in his head.

He’d been given an assignment. Maybe that was a good thing. It wasn’t exactly in his job description, but if it got him into Jon’s good graces and they could have a normal employee relationship, Martin was more than willing to go ask some questions about someone’s former flat.

 _Carlos Vittery_ , the paper read. Then, below that, _Regarding his arachnophobia and its manifestations._

Well, Martin had always been fond of spiders.


	4. Highly Unprofessional

Once this was over (if he survived), Martin decided that he was going to cover every surface in his flat in foam so that he’d never have to hear the sound of knocking again.

He had been hoping a bit desperately that someone at the Institute would realize that he hadn’t been in for quite a while, and that maybe someone should come check on him, but he’d figured after the first five days that no one would be coming to find him. If he were still working at the library, Isabelle or one of the grad student assistants might have gotten suspicious about his extended absence, but the only people he knew at the Institute were the five he’d spoken to, and he didn’t know any of them especially well.

He was just the guy who sat in the back room and moved files around, of course. The one who brought them tea. 

Without his mobile, it was impossible to tell anyone where he was or what was happening. Would they even have believed him? He supposed they might have. More so than Isabelle, at least, since their job was all about things like this. Martin guessed that if nothing else, this was certainly a bombastic way to introduce him to the fact that the supernatural was real. A woman full of holes full of fat, writhing worms full of apparently endless energy, knocking at his door for days and days. 

He’d stopped up every crack he could find, from the bottom of his door to the gaps between tiles in the kitchen, and he was still constantly overcome with fear. The knocking continued and he swore he could feel worms crawling over him whenever he stopped paying attention. He slept only when exhaustion claimed him, and then awoke in a panic at having fallen asleep at all. 

Martin supposed that it was his own fault. He’d thought that maybe going above and beyond in the assignment he’d been given would put him in Jon’s good graces, but instead it had led him to basements with bug-infested women and enough cold tinned beans in pitch-darkness to kill an elephant. And the ceaseless knocking. _Tap tap tap_. Casual. Nonstop.

He’d burned through the books he had around in a couple of days, not that he could really focus on them. Then, along with the constant tension and fear, there was boredom. Martin hadn’t thought that the boredom might end up being just as bad as the constant terror, but it was. He had nothing to do, nothing to occupy his mind, to take it away from the worms and the woman full of holes and the _knocking_.

He almost didn’t notice when it finally stopped. When he awoke from another accidental nap and could hear nothing. Nothing but the heavily muffled city sounds and the tick of the battery clock on the wall. No squirming, no squelching, no _tap tap tap_. 

He didn’t let himself indulge the swell of relief building in him until he opened the door a crack and saw a hallway devoid of life. Undeath? He didn’t know what the woman had been, but she had had worms where there should have been organs. 

Martin didn’t check his power, or grab a change of clothes, or anything, before he snatched up his coat and started out of the building. He didn’t know exactly where he was going until he was already on the Tube and getting off at the stop that took him to the Institute. His mind was a blur, full of the phantom sound of worms being crushed and what he’d tell Jon and Sasha and Tim and whether he could even go back to his flat now, or if the woman would take the chance to fill it with worms that would burrow into him as he slept--

It was about midday, maybe a bit after noon, but Martin had lost most of his sense of time. How long had it been? Two weeks? Just shy. He knew he must look a mess. He didn’t care. The walk passed what felt like instantly.

Then he was going past Rosie, who was asking him if he was feeling better--what did that mean?--and down the stairs, down to the Archives. He’d hardly felt the cold outside, but the Institute was suffocatingly warm. And there were _people_ , people who weren’t full of holes. He could almost cry from relief when he saw Sasha at her desk. 

“Martin?” she asked as he came storming in. “How are you…?”

“Where’s Jon?” Martin demanded. Sasha looked properly taken aback.

“His office? Are you okay? You still look a bit ill.”

“Ill,” Martin echoed. “No, I’m not ill.” He turned toward Jon’s door, but it opened before he could even reach for the handle. 

Jon stood there, eyes sharp, taking in Martin’s bedraggled form. “Martin,” he said. “Welcome back.” 

Martin gave him a look he meant to be intimidating but probably just looked crazed. “I’d like to make a statement,” he said.

“What happened?” Sasha asked, rounding her desk. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Martin said. “And I’d like to make a statement.”

“That doesn’t seem to be your most pressing concern,” Jon said warily.

“I know,” Martin said. He was just realizing, as he came out of his burst of not-going-to-die-by-worm energy, that he was still just as exhausted as he had been before. “This is what we do, right? We take statements about the supernatural, and I’ve just had a pretty big case of ‘encounter with the supernatural.’”

“What?” Sasha asked.

“I haven’t been ill,” Martin said. “It was more of a siege situation.” He looked expectantly at Jon.

Jon nodded slowly and stepped to the side. Martin strode past him, into his office. “Give us just a moment, Sasha,” Jon said, closing the door. Sasha didn’t seem particularly happy about it.

Martin sat down heavily in the chair opposite Jon’s desk, arms crossed and fingers tapping restlessly against them. Jon seemed uncharacteristically hesitant as he made his way to his own seat. 

“Do you need me to say it into a tape recorder?” Martin asked. He had a sudden moment of alarm and whipped his head back around to the door, specifically the crack under it. No towel plugging it up, but no worms. The worms were _gone._ He took a deep breath.

Jon was looking at him very intensely, and normally he would have shrunk back under the weight of it. “Unless you’d like to write it down. What is your statement regarding?”

“Are you going to keep this up?” Martin asked, in a moment of worm-adrenaline-fueled bravery.

Jon, to his credit, looked sincerely confused, though it could just as easily have been at the fact that Martin had never taken that tone with him. “And what do you mean by that?”

“Look,” Martin said, leaning forward. His hands were shaking. He hadn’t noticed. He was actually shaking all over, now that he thought about it. “I’ve just spent the past thirteen days trapped in my flat by a woman who was mostly made up of supernatural worms, with no electricity and no phone. I’m not in a position to be skeptical about any of this anymore. I was plenty skeptical before, but while I was making sure not to let worms bury themselves in my skin and _eat_ me, I had a lot of time to think.” 

He put his hand on Jon’s desk, and Jon glanced down at it. “I don’t know what your reasons are for keeping it all hush hush, now that I work here, but if you could stop pretending like you don’t know that _I_ know that you can read my mind, that would be lovely.”

It was the most that Martin had spoken out loud in days, and it was deeply cathartic. He held Jon’s gaze, watching Jon’s eyes leave him momentarily in thought and then flick right back. 

_“I swear to god, if you say ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’--”_ Martin thought. 

“Do you have _any_ clue how loud that is?” Jon snapped suddenly. He seemed to register what he’d said only after it was already out, but the shoe had already dropped and he had no choice but to double down. “I can hear you just fine without you beaming your thoughts directly into my brain.”

Despite how sure he’d sounded, Martin still felt a sudden wave of something approaching relief. Vindication, maybe. It wasn’t as satisfying as he’d hoped it would be. He’d been right all along, when he hadn’t been trying to convince himself otherwise, and now he was just a bit tired. He sat with that feeling for a moment before it was supplanted by the realization that he’d just been right on the razor’s edge of yelling at his boss, who already didn’t like him, and could read his mind (confirmed). And it had been confirmed. Martin could feel his determination fading away as the high of freedom did.

“Was it...um, was it always that loud?” Martin asked.

“Yes, it was.”

“So I was just…” Martin paused for a moment, and it was strange how the welling up of his near-constant embarrassment felt like a return to normalcy after the worms, though for the moment the residual adrenaline was still winning. “I was just screaming in your ear, then. In the cafe.”

“I’d charitably call it ‘yelling.’”

“Right,” Martin said. “Sorry about that, then, I guess.”

“I imagine you will stop now,” Jon said crisply. He started moving some papers around. “Anyway, this is a discussion that will be had later. If you want to make a statement so we have it on record for research purposes, you certainly can.”

“Do you know what she was?”

Jon paused, sighed, and clasped his hands together on his desk. “I believe you may have encountered the being formerly known as Jane Prentiss.”

“Better than Lady-With-All-The-Worms-In-Her,” Martin said. “I had two weeks, so I guess I should have come up with a better nickname.” He tried a laugh.

“And all she did was knock?” Jon asked.

“She also tried to send worms under my door to kill me.”

“Apart from that.”

“...yeah, all she did was knock.”

Jon furrowed his brow. “I’ve come across a couple of other statements regarding her, or at least something like her. The Flesh-Hive, it’s been called.”

“Oh, god, that’s about a million times worse,” Martin said. “Please don’t say those words in that order.” 

Of course, when Martin thought about it he had to admit that she _had_ looked like some kind of hive, her body more a home for the worms than a real person. Except that she could move. She could speak. She could knock.

“For thirteen days and no one noticed?” Jon asked.

“What?” Oh. Right. Jon could read his--

“Mind,” Jon finished. “That’s not exactly what it is, but close enough.” He sighed. “Your thoughts are, understandably, a bit of a mess at the moment. Perhaps you should give a spoken statement after all.”

“So the best defense against you is having a breakdown, is it?” Martin asked.

“Oh, you aren’t having a breakdown,” Jon said, rather ominously. 

“Heard some good ones?”

“Good isn’t the word I’d use.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Jon pulled out a tape recorder and a blank cassette tape, and from there it was remarkably easy for Martin to recount the past two weeks. Maybe two weeks away had cooled Jon’s disdain for him, or the confirmation of his having preternatural powers made him less guarded, but Martin found that he was much less uncomfortable in Jon’s office now than he had been any other time.

Once he was done talking about the basement of the building he’d broken into and his squirming shadow and the terror of having been stuck in his flat, sure that he was going to die, Martin thought that he’d have to start making his own plans for how to make sure his flat wasn’t terribly infested. He had only a moment to wonder about fumigation and whether he’d have to move all of his furniture, and how he’d have to look at his contract but he wasn’t sure that he could miss many more days of work before he started facing some sort of consequences.

“There’s a room in the Archives where I have slept when working late,” Jon said. “With a cot. It was once humidity-controlled so it should be airtight. I’m sure you can stay there until your flat is...sorted out.”

“Oh, well, um, I mean. That would be great,” Martin said, blinking. “Thanks.”

“You didn’t have your phone,” Jon said. Martin nodded. “It is curious then that I received a few texts from you while you were gone.”

Martin paled a bit. “Ah.”

“Said that you were having stomach problems. One said that you thought it might be a ‘parasite.’”

“Made of worms _and_ a comedian,” Martin lamented. “I assume it was her, at least. Oh, god, I hope she doesn’t try to give it back.”

There was a well-timed muffled buzz, and Jon and Martin shared a glance. Jon opened a drawer in his desk and took out his phone. “I’ve just received another.”

Martin listened to Jon read the text, with its cryptic message and thinly veiled threat, and all he could see were slimy, worm-coated fingers tapping on his phone screen, holding it, looking through his images and the poetry he kept in his notes app. He imagined worms themselves crawling across the screen to type on the keyboard, and the smell...

Jon grimaced. “Stop that.”

“Well, sorry that I can’t control my own thoughts,” Martin snapped. “I’m not enjoying it either.”

“I am well aware,” Jon said. “ And I can’t control what I hear, so I’m well within my rights to complain about it.”

“You can’t control it?”

“Later,” Jon said. There was a hurried knocking at his door and Martin, despite himself, flinched. “Come in.”

It was just Sasha, and Martin knew that it was just Sasha, but he still had a moment of panic at the thought that the door might open to reveal long, dark hair and a tattered dress and that smell. 

Then again, Jon could hear thoughts, couldn’t he? So he’d know who was there. As long as Jon was in the room, Martin could probably be sure about whether Jane Prentiss was near him or not.

“It’s been twenty minutes and you look terrible,” Sasha said. “Out here, answers, and you’re taking a shower. Sorry, Jon.”

“We’re done.”

“Did you hear any of that…?” Martin asked, remembering that he _did_ still have a physical body that looked like it had been held captive in the dark for two weeks. 

“Jane Prentiss,” she said. “I’m going to want the story, but you need to get cleaned up first. Come on, then. I think Tim has some spare clothes for when he goes on a run.”

Martin stood, and as he followed Sasha out of Jon’s office, answering some brisk questions about what exactly had happened to him, he felt a strange warmth. Being cared for. It was a bit uncomfortable, if he was honest, but in a good way. 

_“Thanks,”_ he thought to Jon.

“Ow,” Jon said pointedly from inside his office.

Oh, right.

\--

“Okay, well, first order of business,” Tim said, sitting forward in his wooden chair. He’d arrived back at the Archives just before Martin had come back down from the shower in Artifact Storage, and his spare t-shirt (a tie-dyed free shirt he’d gotten from a half-marathon) fit Martin almost perfectly, despite their differences in build. “Welcome back, congrats on not getting eaten by worms.”

Martin sat opposite him, next to Sasha on the cot Jon had told him to use. “Thanks.”

“Sorry we didn’t rescue you and all. If we’d known we’d have gone in guns blazing, rest assured.”

“My knight in shining armor,” Martin said.

“Exactly. Okay, second order of business, heard you got The Talk.”

“I, um, I more _forced_ The Talk out of him, I think,” Martin said.

Sasha snorted. “Oh, the only reason he was being cagey about it was that he thought Elias might move you out of the Archives if you didn’t know.”

“...right.” Martin was reminded that, despite how accommodating Jon had been regarding the worms and this room, he’d still been largely unhappy with Martin’s presence. “Well, guess I’m stuck here now.”

“You always were,” Sasha whispered, wiggling her fingers, because Martin figured that everyone around here enjoyed making things spookier than they had to be. 

“Second order addendum,” Tim said. “We had a bet. Was it him?”

“What?”

“The statement you never gave. Was it or was it not about Jon?”

“Oh. Yeah, it was. Congrats to whoever won that, I suppose,” Martin said.

“I knew that it was,” Sasha said. “I was just trying to keep it interesting.”

“So speaketh a loser,” Tim said haughtily. “How did you find him out?”

Martin shrugged. “I just...you know, I sort of talked to him? Thought to him. He was at a cafe I go to a lot. Went to. And he looked...startled, so.”

“Oh, that was probably our fault,” Sasha said.

“We had a bit of our own siege going on,” Tim said. “I had Mambo No. 5 and Sasha, you were…?”

“As much of Les Misérables as I could remember,” she said. “Which is about half of three songs.”

“What?” Martin asked.

“Jon was being a bit extra cantankerous, long story, won’t get into it, and so we figured we’d either flush him out or get him to apologize,” Tim explained. “So we just sort of...thought-sang? All day. You couldn’t _imagine_ the colors his face can turn.”

“That’s…” Martin laughed incredulously. “Really kind of cruel, isn’t it?”

“Oh, believe me, we let him know that all he had to do was say ‘sorry’ and we’d stop,” Sasha said. “Instead he decided to leave.”

“Which brings us to our third order of business, which is that you need to pick a song,” Tim said. 

Martin could feel his own smile, coming to him easily and unbidden. He wasn’t used to it. “I’ll give it a good think.”

“Don’t think too hard,” Sasha said. “Make it a bit of a surprise.”

“So he can really...hear everything we’re thinking?”

“All of it,” Tim confirmed.

Martin shifted a little. “Doesn’t that bother you?”

Tim shrugged. “Yeah.”

“If he’s heard anything particularly bad he hasn’t mentioned it, or used it against us,” Sasha said.

“He specifically asked for both of us,” Tim said. “Anyway, he can’t exactly look through your memories. He just hears the thoughts as they happen. If you’re really concentrating on it, it’s not that hard to keep things you don’t want there out.”

“Or replace them with something else.”

“Is it fucked up? Definitely.” Tim looked like he was thinking very carefully about what to say. “But, well, Jon’s mostly harmless.” He paused. “And I’ll quit eventually.”

Martin let out a long breath and nodded. “Right. Great.”

“Do you need one of us to go to your flat? To pick up clothes and whatever.”

Martin’s eyes widened. “No, I don’t want anyone going back there.”

“She’s probably gone,” Sasha said. “One of us could at least go with you and keep an eye out so there’s no Part Two.”

“Not just yet,” Martin said warily. “I’ll be fine for a day or two. It’s good to get out, you know.”

They left it at that, thankfully, though Martin could tell they were still worried. It was an unfamiliar feeling to have people going out of their way to help him. Not that other people in his life were actively trying to make it harder, but he rarely found himself the center of other people’s attention like this. 

Sleeping in the Archives was actually kind of pleasant, once Martin had checked every corner and crevice to make sure it was worm-proof. It was warm, with an ancient green carpet that muffled footsteps and bookshelves full of actual books, instead of statements and boxes. There were boxes, too, of course, but it didn’t have the same feeling as the rest of the Archives. Still outdated, still dusty, but just fine for sleeping.

It was lonely, though, and since he didn’t want to keep every light in the Archives on all night he could barely bring himself to leave the back room. Tim and Sasha’s desks and the door to Jon’s office were all much more sinister in the darkness. It felt sort of like Martin was staying at school after hours, with dark hallways and the sense that he shouldn’t be there, that his presence was somehow _wrong_.

In the cot, however, he was perfectly cozy, so that’s where he stayed. There were no worms and no knocking.

\--

Knowing for a fact that Jon could hear his thoughts didn’t change as much of his workday as Martin had supposed it would.

Bigger a change was that Jon was no longer being openly hostile. His treatment of Martin had settled into a sort of polite detachment. A perfectly normal boss-employee kind of distance, though Jon was simultaneously the most dedicated and most hands-off boss Martin had ever had. 

He spent every moment of the day working, either poring over a metric ton of statements or reading the “difficult” ones into a tape recorder. Martin listened in once or twice, and was surprised to find Jon’s voice more animated than he’d ever heard it before. It was almost cinematic, the way he read the statements, almost like he _was_ the statement giver recounting their experience. It was entrancing.

The ones Jon read aloud were also absolutely terrifying, but Martin figured that if this was his job now then he’d have to get over it.

Martin still brought Jon tea, and Jon still accepted it without much acknowledgment. He did seem to be drinking it most of the time, at least, and Martin learned with a bit of time that Jon would sometimes get so caught up in his work that he forgot to go home, let alone notice the tea. It wasn’t that he was ignoring it on purpose. That would require him to be thinking about something besides statements and follow-up and monsters.

Jon would come out of his office occasionally to issue new assignments to Tim and Sasha, and sometimes Martin. He conspicuously only gave Martin assignments that did not involve him leaving the Archives, and Martin wanted to help more than just putting file numbers in the correct order, so he was happy to make some phone calls and do some research on the internet. 

“Be careful,” Tim said one day, just a few days after Martin returned to work. “Jon’s a sneaky one. He gets hooks in you and the next thing you know, you’re actually listening to what he says and worrying about his health.”

Martin didn’t really know what Tim meant by that, until he did. It was really inexplicable, if Martin thought about it, how unfriendly and spooky Jon could be and how little it mattered for how they treated him. He supposed that it could be sort of summed up in the look Jon got on his face when he was working late and one of the three of them came into his office to remind him to “go home eventually.” The way he would look up like he’d been honestly surprised, like a child absorbed in a game, not realizing that play time had already ended. Jon was, despite his demeanor, bad at taking care of himself in the way that made other people want to help him. And Martin was certainly used to being a helper. 

There were a few times that Martin had gotten ready to go to bed, long after Tim and Sasha had gone home, and he’d stumbled on Jon, still in his office. One of these times, Martin was not wearing trousers, and he and Jon shared a long, uncomfortable stare before Jon said, “Why would I fire you for that?” and Martin realized that he’d managed to go on half an hour’s worth of panicked thoughts in just a second. 

“It’s late,” is what Martin ended up saying. “You should go home.”

“It’s not that late,” Jon said, pulling out the drawer where he stashed his phone.

Martin was pretty sure that that last he’d checked the time it was just after 10pm, so he figured that it was probably getting on 10:30.

“10:23, actually,” Jon said. He seemed confused, and he had that look that Martin had recognized. Jon’s eyes snapped up. “I don’t look like that.”

“Yes, you do,” Martin said. “A bit.”

“All three of you seem to think that,” Jon said. “I wouldn’t use most of those words. Highly unprofessional.”

Martin reddened a bit, more embarrassed at that than at standing there in his pants and a t-shirt. “I didn’t say anything.”

“No, you didn’t,” Jon sighed. “I’m sorry. _That_ was unprofessional.”

“Maybe you should get some sleep then,” Martin said. “You said you didn’t want to stay here too late.”

“I sleep,” Jon said. He was starting to make the movements of packing up and getting ready to go, but only hesitantly. “I just got caught up, today.”

 _“How about I start doing this at 5 every day?”_ Martin thought. Jon winced.

“How about you don’t,” he said. “I’m leaving. No need. I appreciate the concern, but it isn’t necessary.”

 _“Fine,”_ Martin thought. Jon sent him a withering glare.

“I think you’d want to be careful,” Jon said as he stood. He snapped his laptop closed. “You never know what I might say the next time you’re waxing poetic about my eyes.”

Martin flushed in an instant, suddenly very aware that he was only in his pants and that Jon had complete access to the inside of his head, or at least his immediate thoughts. He also remembered with a start that he _had_ still spent weeks carrying out a one-way screaming conversation with Jon, and that Jon had been around when he and Isabelle were talking about him, and that Martin had spent some time at the cafe working through the beginnings of poems, and that all of this was potentially very bad.

What had Sasha said about Jon not using anything he heard against them?

“I think there’s a marked difference between things I overhear and things that are told directly to me,” Jon said. “You get to choose on which side of the line you fall.”

Martin started to edge away, looking a bit stricken. “Have a good trip home, then. Safe trip. Hope you hear some, uh, _good_ innermost thoughts. On your way. Or whatever you do. Good night. Bye.”

It almost looked like Jon was going to smile, though it was only a hint in his eyes, with his mouth still drawn in a flat line, but Martin didn’t get to see any more than that. He ducked out of the doorway, making his way swiftly back to his room. He closed the door behind him as quietly as he could and sat down hard on the cot. 

Somehow, in the more-than-a-week that he’d been staying in the Archives, Martin had not quite registered the implications of Jon’s mind-reading on all of things Martin had thought to him and about him in the cafe. It was, frankly, a can of worms (pun partially intended) that Martin was not emotionally prepared to deal with. He took a deep breath, made the firm decision not to be embarrassed about it, and locked it away in the safe in his mind. 

It tried to slip out as he closed the door, but he squashed it back in and moved his thoughts over to anything else. Not Jon, not where he was, not about how Martin would, if given the chance, go back and tell his month-younger self not to accept any job offers given to him in the offices of men he’d never met before. Also not about how, despite that, Martin had no real desire to quit. 

And absolutely not about how Jon still _did_ have nice eyes, objectively, even though he was a prick and had nosy superpowers and had only stopped being mean to Martin because of mortal peril.

Martin still needed the loo, so he got up and peeked into the corridor. Lights were off. Jon was gone. He let out a long sigh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> knock knock


	5. Philosophy Class

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is late because I accidentally listened to the entirety of RQG in a week and a half.
> 
> tw. blood, injury

It was the middle of the night, there had been worms on the pavement in front of the Institute for a week, and Sasha was bleeding.

Martin was awoken by someone shaking his shoulder, and he only jumped about a foot in the air. Sasha looked lost, a bit distant, and when he turned on the lamp next to his cot he saw the tear in her coat and shirt, with dark, drying blood soaking into the cloth. Martin had his second heart attack in as many seconds.

“Sasha? What’s--what’s--what happened?”

“Morning. You know where the first aid kit is?” she asked. 

Martin nodded, hopping up and hurrying out into the office in a daze. Tim had some antiseptic ointment and plasters in his desk, but from the momentary look Martin had gotten Sasha would need something a bit more comprehensive. There was a kit on the wall in the bathroom. He fumbled for a moment trying to get it open, the sudden shock of having been woken up and the sight of blood giving a tremor to his hands.

Sasha shrugged off her coat and let it fall to the floor, leaning heavily against the wall beside the first aid kit. Martin glanced over as he grabbed at packages of sterile bandages and medical tape. 

“Sorry to wake you,” she said. Martin actually laughed.

“I’m glad you did,” he said. “What _happened?”_

“Very long story.”

“Right.”

Martin was frazzled, and after assessing Sasha’s bloody shoulder he decided that it would need to be cleaned up first. He shoved the bandages into Sasha’s hands and pulled a handful of paper towels, wetting them in the sink.

“Go sit,” he said, nodding out of the bathroom. Sasha didn’t seem to hear him at first. She was staring at a spot on the floor, and for a terrible moment Martin thought she might be looking at a worm. He followed her gaze, but there was nothing there. Just into space, then. “Sasha.”

She took in a breath and looked up. “Huh? Oh. Yeah. I should...I’ll sit.”

She wandered out of the bathroom and Martin could hear her chair slide on the carpet down the hall. He grabbed some more paper towels and came out after her.

Sasha looked exhausted. Martin pulled over his own chair and sat opposite her. “May I?” he asked.

“Yeah, do whatever you need.” She paused and then laughed weakly. “Sorry, I’m not being very helpful.”

“Are you joking?” Martin asked, the hysterical energy of being surprised with bodily injury leaving him slowly, replaced with focus on the task at hand. He carefully moved the torn bits of Sasha’s shirt aside and dabbed at the area with the most blood.

It was still actively bleeding, but only just. As Martin wiped away the dried blood, he saw its cause. There was what looked like a hole in Sasha’s shoulder, with a few remarkably neat lines cut around it. Martin swallowed thickly.

“That’s...um...that’s a worm hole, is it?”

“Not even the fun sci-fi kind,” Sasha confirmed.

“Ah. Did you…” Martin bit at his lip, finishing with the blood and ripping open a package of bandages. “Did you...cut it out?”

“ _I_ didn’t,” Sasha said. 

“Ah.” Martin busied himself with getting antiseptic ointment on the bandage and placing it carefully over the wound. “Hold this.”

“I met...someone? Something. I’m going to make a statement. It’s been a big day,” Sasha said as her other hand came up to her shoulder. “Michael.”

“Michael.” Not Jane Prentiss.

“Michael.” Sasha shrugged, wincing immediately afterward. “It’s hard to explain. He’s a man but he looks...strange. Distorted. With these absolutely massive hands, but they’re sharp? I’ve seen him in reflections, but...god, I can’t even talk, I’m such a mess.”

“Big sharp hands,” Martin echoed absently, taping the bandage down. He leaned back in his chair to inspect his handiwork. Sasha sighed.

“Thank you, Martin,” she said, smiling tiredly. “Michael pulled the worm out of me...there was a man...another one full of worms…” She closed her eyes. “What time is it?”

Martin glanced up at the clock. “Half past four.”

“Okay,” Sasha said. “When does Jon come in, usually?”

Martin made a face. “Any time from five to...eight-thirty? I can never predict. Do you want to call him?”

“He’s probably sleeping. Well, he’ll hear me when he gets here. I just need to sit for a second.”

“Did you sleep at all?” Martin asked. “You can take my cot. I’m...well, I’m wide awake now.” He tried a laugh.

“I’d say no but I’m dead on my feet.” There was a pause. “Oh!” she said suddenly, eyes flying open. “Where’s the fire extinguisher?”

Martin blinked. “I don’t know.”

“Find it. It’s--the worms. CO2. It gets them.”

“I...okay. Great. Really? It’s that simple?” Martin knew for a fact that he had a fire extinguisher somewhere in his flat, and he had a sudden vision of two weeks _not_ trapped and terrified. He shook it away. No use dwelling on things that hadn’t happened.

“Apparently,” Sasha said, standing a bit unsteadily. Martin offered a hand but she shook her head. “I’m good. Just tired. Not about to keel over. I think I’m going to take you up on the bed.”

“Go for it.”

“Sorry if I bleed on it.”

“That’s what the bandage is for,” Martin said. His legs were cold, and he realized that he hadn’t pulled on any trousers when he’d jumped out of bed and all he had on was a t-shirt and boxers. “Let me just. I’ll get dressed real quick, if that’s okay with you.”

“It’s your room,” Sasha said with a bit of a smile. 

“Sorry about the, uh…” Martin said, gesturing to himself. 

“Oh, I’m so offended,” Sasha drawled. “If you’re going to wake up in the middle of the night and go out of your way to take care of my flesh wounds you could at least have the decency to put on clothes. Don’t be silly.”

Martin laughed and went to put on something quick. It turned out to be sweatpants and the jumper he’d worn the day before. Sasha nearly collapsed onto his bed, letting out a breath that seemed to deflate her entire body. Martin left her there, closing the door quietly and going to his desk. There wasn’t much for him to do, but he could certainly make some tea and do something to start his day. 

He located the fire extinguisher, not sure if he should actually take it off the wall or not. He decided to leave it, reasoning that it was meant to be taken and used quickly, worms or not, so it was probably easy to access.

The next couple of hours were uneventful, and Martin had plenty of time to think everything over. He had a momentary thought along the lines of “Why does this only happen to us?” that was immediately followed by the realization that the giant storeroom of statements very clearly said otherwise. He felt dumb and decided to just sit and scroll through the same few news stories on his phone. His eyes flicked up occasionally to check the floor for errant worms, as they always did, but he saw nothing.

At about 8 the elevator door _ding_ ed and opened, and Jon came in, bag over his shoulder. He stopped when he saw Martin sitting at his desk, paused for a moment, and then took a deep breath.

“Is she still asleep?” he asked.

Martin hadn’t even realized that he’d been thinking about Sasha. He took a second to process the question, and then shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Right,” Jon said. He shifted his gaze over in the approximate direction of Martin’s room. “No, she’s been awake for a little while.”

It was really kind of alarming how quickly Martin was getting used to this. To Jon being able to pluck what he was about to say out of his head before he could say it. To Jon being more aware of what was happening in Martin’s head than Martin himself. It should have felt like some crazy invasion of privacy, but besides a few quips to stop Martin from screaming into his ear, Jon seemed uninterested in the majority of what he must have been hearing. Maybe it was just that he’d heard so many terrible things that he was entirely disillusioned. Martin thought that was kind of sad.

Jon’s remarkable tact regarding the thoughts of literally every person around him seemed incongruous with his character, or at least the character that Martin had assigned him when they’d first met. He was brusque and had been abrasive, but with time Martin was getting the sense that it was more a combination of chronic exhaustion and discomfort in social situations. He wasn’t actively malicious, at least not since Martin had moved into the Archives. 

Martin also wondered what was going on in Jon’s head that made him able to hear people’s thoughts and still have difficulty talking to them. Martin had always thought that a power like that would make things easier. Maybe that had been silly of him to think. He wasn’t sure if knowing what other people thought of him would make anything better. 

Jon, at Sasha’s request, took her statement with the door open, and so Martin watched them and listened. Jon was very intently focused on Sasha as she spoke, no doubt making notes on what she was thinking as she spoke, what extra details she was accidentally leaving out and what visual components he could get from her mind. He didn’t interrupt, or break concentration, though he still managed to nod whenever Sasha looked up for confirmation or to see if she should give more information. 

Then Jon sent her home, no questions asked, and told her to call once she was there. His voice was clipped but he seemed to take extra care around her shoulder, making sure she didn’t want to get it seen by a professional first, because he could call an ambulance, or someone could accompany her to the hospital, or did she need some more first aid supplies for home?

Martin hadn’t realized that he’d been staring this entire time, until Jon was watching Sasha walk down the hall and Martin finally noticed that he had a bunch of statements arrayed in front of him and no idea why he’d put them there. Jon looked worried, or at least more so than usual.

“She’s okay,” Martin said. Jon jumped.

“I know,” he replied. He looked over to his door, as though he were about to go back into his office, but he paused. Eyes back to Martin. “If you...if you’re investigating a case…” He looked a bit pained. “Either of you. I don’t expect you to endanger yourselves in the name of ‘due diligence.’ Your safety is more important.”

Martin blinked, and it took him a moment to understand. His eyes widened and he shook his head. “It’s not your fault.”

But he could see the connection Jon was making. Martin had gone back into Carlos Vittery’s apartment building for the second time because he was afraid that Jon wouldn’t be happy if he didn’t get all of the information he could. Sasha had mentioned something about investigating the Michael creature for Jon’s benefit. It wasn’t exactly a Herculean leap of logic to put them together.

“Don’t worry, boss,” Tim said. “I’m not going to jump into any volcanoes for you.”

Jon sighed, beleaguered. _“Thanks_ , Tim.”

“Unless you’ve got mind _control_ too, you, um...you shouldn’t worry,” Martin said. Jon’s obvious concern was doing strange things to Martin’s chest, and he was ignoring it as pointedly as he could. “We can all make our own dumb decisions.”

“Right,” Jon said, obviously not convinced. He was looking at Tim, even though Martin had spoken. Was Tim thinking something contrary? 

Jon went back into his office and Tim didn’t say anything, no snide comments once the door had closed (which was a practice in futility anyway, since Jon could hear them either way. Maybe it was about the etiquette of it). Anyway, Martin was occupied with a train of thought that was both unproductive and unfortunate, considering where he was and who might be listening. 

Jon was worried that Martin had put himself in danger because of him. _Your safety is more important_. Martin reasoned that the only cause of the unruly affection threatening to take over his brain was that he wasn’t used to having people be concerned about his wellbeing, and that this unfamiliarity was making it seem bigger than it was. It was normal for Jon to not want his employees to get hurt. Most bosses didn’t want that. Most people didn’t want other people to be hurt. 

Then again, Jon had immediately let Martin stay in the Archives when it seemed that his flat wasn’t safe. He’d sent Sasha home when she was hurt, despite her complaints, and had asked her to call so he could make sure she was okay. Jon _cared_ , and the last thing Martin needed was a pretty man with the ability to read his mind to care about him. Therein only lay unfortunate pining and subsequent embarrassment.

And Martin needed to stop thinking about it _right now_ , because Jon could hear this entire progression as it was happening. Martin took the reins and steered his brain hard, away from Jon and how nice his hair always looked, even if it was messy, to Sasha and the implications of the story she’d told. More people full of worms. A strange man with sharp hands the size of his body and unusual knowledge of how to get _rid_ of the worms. There being more legitimate supernatural phenomena in the world besides the worms. 

Just the normal things.

\--

Martin didn’t really expect people to call him, besides the assisted living facility and his boss, so he was rightly startled by his phone buzzing on the wood of his desk after hours. 

“Hello?” 

_“Martin? I hope I didn’t get the wrong number.”_

Martin paused. “Isabelle?”

_“Yep! Stole your number from the employee database, sorry.”_

“No, it’s fine, I just,” Martin started, not sure where he was going. “Hi.”

_“Hi? It’s been weeks! Yes, hi! How are you?”_

“I’ve been okay. Just, um…” Martin considered all of the things that had happened since he had seen Isabelle last and decided that she didn’t need to know that his job had gotten him locked in his flat and that he’d now moved into his new workplace. That seemed like the kind of thing that she’d tell him was _not_ normal or okay, and he knew that already. “Just settling in to the new job, you know.”

 _“Still haven’t forgiven you, for the record,”_ Isabelle said. _“The new grad student isn’t half as fun to talk to.”_

“I’m flattered,” Martin said, smiling. “I’m known for my conversational skills.”

Talking to Isabelle was pleasant and felt very strange. It was like Martin was living in two different worlds that didn’t want to exist together, like the universe where he had a mind-reading boss and was being chased by a woman full of supernatural worms and the universe where he scanned in books in a university library with Isabelle were entirely separate, and no matter how much he shook the bottle the oil and water would not mix.

And still, somehow, Martin found himself sitting in an armchair in Isabelle’s living room about two hours later, a cup of tea cooling on the coffee table and the smell of something garlicky and buttery wafting through the warm house. 

He hadn’t been there before, so it was odd that the first time would be when he was no longer working at the library. He wasn’t sure that he would have called them “friends,” but maybe other people had different criteria. He certainly wasn’t complaining. This was the most normal he’d felt in weeks.

“Dan’s been working late almost every night,” Isabelle said, lying on the sofa. “For a while _I_ was the one who would get home late.”

“What does he do?” Martin asked.

“Disaster damage inspection. And apparently there’s a new fire for him to look at every week, now. You’d think half of London was on fire, the way he’s been stuck there.” Isabelle sighed and took her wine glass off the table.

“Well, that’s...I mean, not good for the people who had the fires, I guess?”

“No,” Isabelle said. “And it also means that Dan’s doing overtime _all_ the time.”

“Right, that too.”

“It would be fine, I mean, I’m not _clingy,_ god forbid, but lately he’s been seeming so happy about it. About doing so much work.” Isabelle hoisted herself up into a sitting position, taking a sip of wine and then putting the glass back on the table. “Used to be that he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”

Martin hummed. “Maybe it’ll calm down soon?”

“I sure hope so.” 

“You don’t think that…” Martin started. 

“No, I don’t think so,” Isabelle cut in. “He’s pretty normal when he does come home. It’s just that he’s busy. I feel like it’d be more than just him getting home late if he was...you know.”

“No, yeah, I mean, that’s…” Martin tried. “I wasn’t saying that he _is_ doing anything, I just…”

“It’s what you think of first, I know,” Isabelle said. “Anyway, no need for me to just blabber on about him.” She brightened her expression forcefully and took her wine again. “I haven’t seen you in so _long_ , it feels like a hundred years. Any progress with Mr. Mind-reader?”

Martin’s eyes widened and he looked away. He hadn’t _really_ mentioned what his new job was, besides it being “archiving and research,” let alone that it was at the Magnus Institute. The spooky old ghost library. “Not really. I’ve, um, I’ve talked to him a few more times. He’s less...abrasive? No he’s still abrasive, just...he’s not mean, as a person.”

“Asked him on a date? Or thought about it near him?” Isabelle hid a smile in her glass.

“No! No, we’re not, um, I don’t know him that well? It’s not.” He offered a little laugh. “Like that.”

“Ugh, you’ve got to give me _something_ ,” Isabelle complained. “How often do you see him?”

“Oh, he’s, you know. He’s around.”

“You’re being awfully cagey for it not being like that,” Isabelle said. 

“I’m not being _cagey,”_ Martin scoffed. “I’m not going to date him. For all I know he’s straight.”

“For all you know.”

“I can’t just ask,” Martin said. He shifted in his chair a bit. “Do you want to watch a movie or something?”

Isabelle put her hands up in surrender. “Okay, fine, fine. Consider it dropped.”

“Just trust me that it’s not going to happen,” Martin said. 

“I dropped it! Oops! On the floor.”

“Okay.” Martin smiled a little. “If anything happens I’ll let you know first.”

“I am sweeping up the pieces!”

The whiplash of going from the Archives, full of scary stories and demon worms, to this, was making Martin feel a little dizzy. It wasn’t all bad. He had a friend. More friends than just the Archival staff. He could have things like that. 

He sipped at the tea that he hadn’t had to make.

\--

Jon had been antsy all day, up and out of his office, into document storage, to Artifact Storage, around to all of the assistants’ desks, pacing. There wasn’t anything particularly pressing--Martin had stepped on a couple of terrible worms earlier in the day, but they hadn’t seen any more since then. There weren’t any cases that were particularly pressing. Jon just seemed to be bothered.

There had been a tense statement given by some ghost-hunting Youtuber, but from what Martin had heard through the door it sounded about the same as any other creepy statement they got. The tension had largely been because of the woman’s personality and the ways it didn’t interact well with Jon’s, but it was hardly the first time that Jon had argued with someone.

So it didn’t make much sense when Martin went into the kitchenette and saw Jon standing by the counter, tapping his foot quickly and staring into the middle distance. 

“Are you alright?” Martin asked. Jon’s eyes snapped up to him.

“I’m fine,” he said, in the way that meant that he didn’t want to talk about it, not that he was actually fine.

“You already know everything I’m concerned about,” Martin said. “So…?”

Jon took a second, obviously trying to decide if he should answer. “Is there some event today that I don’t know about?” he asked. 

Martin didn’t think so. Before he could voice that, Jon had already heard it and was glaring at the wall again. “Why?” Martin asked.

“If not in the Institute, then on the street?” Jon tried. “Any...parties?”

Martin went to the kettle. “Not that I know of.”

“Then where are all these…?” Jon started, cutting himself off and sighing sharply. “I appreciate it, but the concern isn’t necessary. And I _have_ slept, thank you. I’ll figure this out myself.”

“Is it something you’re hearing?” Martin asked, furrowing his brow as he filled the kettle.

“Isn’t it always?” Jon said, voice uncharacteristically resigned. That was gone in a second, though, and he was all sharp edges again. “I’m going out. I’ll be back before the end of the day.”

He pushed off from the counter and was out of the kitchenette in a flash. Martin considered going after him, to keep pressing about what was making him so jumpy, but at the same time he didn’t want to hover. Experience told him that people didn’t appreciate that. 

Martin only made tea for three, and he spent the afternoon researching the locations of a couple of statements and putting others in order. There was the constant undercurrent of vigilance, in the event of worms, but other than the occasional glance at the floor and vents there wasn’t much to be done there. The Institute was not about to let a woman full of worms in through the front door, so there was no reason to believe that some kind of attack was imminent, if these worms were even directly related to her. Given Sasha’s experience with Timothy Hodge, there could be any number of Flesh Hives (still a terrible combination of words) walking around. An occupational hazard.

Jon returned at about four o’clock, bringing in a swell of cold air off of his coat. He went straight into his office and closed the door. Tim and Sasha gave each other a quick look.

“He’s been hearing some strange things, I think?” Martin said. “Stranger than usual.”

“Has to be pretty strange for him to be concerned about it,” Tim said. “Given all the stuff I’m sure he hears and ignores.”

“We promised not to go there,” Sasha said.

“Oh, believe me, I’m not.”

“Where?” Martin asked.

“Okay, _not_ to go there, but we already had a bit of a discussion about, I don’t know. Ethics? Like,” Sasha said, thinking. “If Jon hears that someone has committed a crime, is he obligated to alert someone? I mean, without any evidence except ‘I heard them think it’ there’s not much he can do.”

“But what if it’s something really bad?” Tim continued. “Right? That’s the question. Not going to start this up again, though. Took us hours and we got basically nowhere.”

“Basically, you can’t be sure if what someone is thinking is what actually happened,” Sasha said. “Or, say, if Jon hears that someone is _thinking_ about doing a crime, just say that it’s the worst crime you can imagine, but they haven’t done it yet. But they’ve got a whole plan. What does he do then? He can’t be obligated to try and stop it himself, can he?”

“With no evidence,” Tim said. “And no actual crime. It’s the sticky questions.”

It hadn’t even occurred to Martin, the wider implications of Jon’s abilities. If he couldn’t control what he could hear...well, even if he could? Martin looked down at the statements in front of him, brows knitting together.

“Oh no,” Sasha said. “Don’t do it. You’ll never get out of the spiral.”

“Pretend we never said anything,” Tim added.

Martin didn’t _want_ to think about it, especially not when there was already something going on with Jon that might require his worry. Martin could worry about lots of things, but even for him there was a limit to the number and complexity of things he could be simultaneously concerned about.

Jon’s door opened, and he appeared in the doorway, looking weary. “If philosophy class could take a break,” he said. “Has anyone come into the Archives today besides the three of you?”

“Melanie King,” Sasha said. 

“And besides Melanie King,” Jon said, unable to keep the edge of annoyance out of his voice. 

“I don’t think so,” Martin said. “I haven’t seen anyone, at least.”

“Right.” Jon narrowed his eyes and retreated back into his office. “Tell me if anyone does,” he added before closing the door.

“He’d hear them before we did,” Sasha said, watching Jon’s door with a puzzled expression.

“He’s been a bit off all day,” Martin said. “But, I mean...maybe he’ll be concentrating on something? I don’t know exactly how this works.”

“Maybe he’s taking a nap,” Tim said. 

Martin laughed out loud at that, at the concept of Jon being in the Archives and _not_ working, unless he passed out from exhaustion at his desk. 

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Sasha said. Martin hoped she was right.

\--

Jon’s weird behavior continued. He seemed on edge and distracted, sometimes losing the thread of a conversation and staring into space, having to be reminded of what was going on. He wasn’t necessarily snappier or harsher, but he seemed to be split down the middle, one half working and reading and recording statements and the other someplace else entirely. 

“Astral projecting,” Tim suggested, and Martin legitimately didn’t know whether to take him seriously or not.

It only seemed to worsen as the days wore on. Martin would catch Jon staring intensely at the wall, after everyone had gone home and he was the only one left in the office, for stretches of up to a half hour. Complete silence, motionless. When Jon broke out of it he looked like he was in pain, rubbing his forehead and grimacing down at abandoned statements on his desk. And of course Martin was worried, even if he had no idea what was going on. Something was obviously wrong.

It was one of those nights, where Jon stayed late, and Martin could see his office light on through the small window in his door. Martin had learned that Jon was stubborn, especially when people were trying to look after his health, so there was probably no use telling him that he should go home and sleep. Martin decided that he could make some tea and maybe make Jon’s night a bit less stressful.

He didn’t necessarily want to _encourage_ Jon staying up so late, so he fixed up some chamomile tea instead of anything caffeinated. He carefully walked two mugs over, peeking into the crack in Jon’s door. 

“Can I come in?” he asked. No response. Maybe Jon had fallen asleep at his desk. That wasn’t good for his back.

Martin asked again, and still got nothing. He pushed the door open with his foot and looked inside. Jon was _not_ asleep at his desk. Instead he seemed to be in one of his new fugue states, staring into the middle distance with a slight frown. He was playing absently with a pen, clicking and unclicking, unscrewing parts of it and screwing them back on, but other than that he was motionless.

“Oh no, Jon,” Martin muttered. He came in and set the mugs down on the scant free space on Jon’s desk and then leaned over, trying to see if he could catch Jon’s eye. “Hello? Are you okay?” He waved his hand.

Jon took a second and then shuddered as he came back to himself, blinking and looking up at Martin. “What?” he asked.

“Are you okay?”

Jon blinked a few more times, looking down at the papers on his desk. “I...yes, I suppose so.”

“Did you not hear me coming? Anything I was thinking?”

Jon shook his head slowly. “How long have you been here?”

“I mean, I don’t leave the Archives much,” Martin said, offering a half-smile. He took the opportunity to pull over one of the other chairs, the ones statement-givers sat in, from where it was tucked in by the wall. “I thought you could hear me all the time.”

“I...can,” Jon said, looking puzzled. “I was distracted. There’s…” He looked like he’d just woken up from a late nap. “I just didn’t this time. There was something louder.”

Martin got the first stirrings of discomfort and fear in his stomach. “Something louder, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Like...voices? Or thoughts or whatever.”

“Thoughts. I think.” Jon winced as he adjusted his sitting position a bit. He must have been motionless for a while. He looked at the tea. “They don’t sound like anything I’ve heard before.”

“Oh, that’s…” Martin started, eyes wide. “Bad?”

“They’re singing,” Jon said. He paused, eyes drifting away, but he caught himself. “I can’t hear exactly what they’re saying but I still...I know.”

“Everything always needs to be one degree spookier, doesn’t it?” Martin said with a nervous laugh.

“It’s fine,” Jon said. Some of his sense of decorum was returning to him. “I’ve been working to figure out what it is. There’s always an explanation.”

“Yeah, and the explanation is probably something terrible and scary,” Martin said. Jon leveled a tired look at him. 

“I don’t know all of the parameters of my abilities. For all I know, this could be something entirely mundane.”

“Is _anything_ about this mundane?” Martin asked. Jon sighed.

“Well. I appreciate your concern and the tea.”

Martin was a bit disappointed. He felt like he’d gotten his foot in the door, a bit of access to a less stiff Jon, one who opened up, and now Jon had politely shooed him away and closed the door again. He also knew that Jon could hear him thinking that. Martin could be stubborn too, if the situation required it, and he wasn’t sure if this one did or not.

“Right. I’ll go to bed then, I guess,” Martin said, taking his mug. He didn’t stand up yet. “Have these, um...is this happening to you when you’re at home?”

“No,” Jon said. “Only here.”

“Well, that’s definitely going to help me sleep tonight,” Martin announced.

“If nothing bad has happened in the past couple of weeks then you will probably continue to be fine.”

“You’ve been hearing this for _weeks_?”

“It’s gotten louder but yes.” 

“What...you said that you couldn’t hear what they were saying but that you...um...know?” Martin fidgeted with the string of the tea bag. “What is it that you know?”

Jon looked away, around the room, like he was searching for something. “That it’s safe. That I’ll be okay. That I just have to find them and everything will be fine.”

Martin swallowed and nodded. “That’s not great,” he squeaked.

Jon was looking at the wall. “No, not really.”


	6. Regarding a Wasp’s Nest in Her Attic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wyrm time.

_Working from home,_ the text read. _Archives are too loud._

Martin sighed at his phone, putting down a manila folder. He tapped out an answer. _Alright, need anything?_

_No._

Typical. Well, it made sense for Jon not to want to spend any more time in the Archives than he had to, with how debilitating the new, mysterious voices seemed to be. Martin tucked his phone back into his pocket and returned to the mess on his desk. There were several folders in storage that had gotten some of their pages mixed up with others, and he was collecting the mismatches and cataloguing them, in case he found their real home. 

Tim came in late with a to-go cup and a bagel. He waved with the bagel and Martin waved back. 

“No boss man today?” Tim asked around a full mouth as he sat.

“He said it’s too loud here.”

“Ah, yes,” Tim said. “The Archives. Known ‘loudest place in the Magnus Institute.’”

“You know what he means,” Martin sighed.

“I do, and I’m really, really not thinking about it.”

Martin fidgeted with the corner of a folder as Tim got himself settled in. Try as he might, he couldn’t focus. Not around the image, slowly coming to him, of fingers covered in black slime and worms, tapping out messages on his phone. 

“Hey, do you think...um…” he started. He took a breath. “You don’t think he’s...I’m...I’m going to call him.”

Tim raised an eyebrow. “Okay?”

Martin held his phone to his ear and waited. A long pause...a ring...another pause...a ring...on and on until there was a click and _“This is the phone of Jonathan Sims. Leave your number and a message--”_

Martin’s stomach dropped, and he tried a nervous laugh. “He didn’t pick up.”

“You know he forgets his phone everywhere,” Tim said. 

“I know, I just...you know how when I was...when Prentiss trapped me and, um.” Martin hit _call_ again and waited, listening to it ring and ring. “And she had my phone.”

Tim blinked and then his eyes widened. “I mean he never picks up, does he? You don’t think she got him.”

“No! No, of course not, I just…” Martin heard the beginning of Jon’s voicemail again and shook his head quickly. “I’m going to check on him.”

“Martin, he’s probably fine.”

“I know.” Martin stood and shrugged on his coat, telling himself that it _was_ probably okay, that he was just overreacting. The anxiety was swirling in his gut and tightening every muscle. “I’m just going to check. Just in case.”

Tim looked worried, but it seemed to be more for Martin than Jon. “I mean, if you have to.”

“I do,” Martin confirmed, feeling silly and also absolutely sure that he had to go to Jon’s flat immediately. He couldn’t say that he needed to trust his gut--he got anxious about almost everything, and if he acted on all of it then he’d never get anything done--but he wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about this. 

Sasha was coming back down from an errand in Research and Martin passed her on the stairs, too wired to take the elevator. She must have seen the look on his face because she gave him a look of concern, but he just smiled tightly and continued up the steps as fast as he could go without running. 

“I’ll be back,” he called down the stairs.

Jon had made sure that everyone in the Archives knew where everyone else lived, in case of another incident like Martin’s. For this _exact_ situation, in fact. Martin pulled the address from the notes on his phone as he walked briskly to catch a train. He knew he was probably overreacting. Definitely overreacting.

But, he told himself, he was just making sure. He now lived in a world where people got eaten by magical worms and, if the statements Jon read into his tape recorders were true, a million other terrible, supernatural things happened every day. It wasn’t an overreaction. It was just a _reaction_.

\--

Well, there were no worms flooding the floor outside of Jon’s flat. None of their black, sticky residue. None of that smell. Martin had nearly had a panic attack as he walked up the stairs, in the anticipation of some kind of worm-themed disaster scene, but it was entirely untouched. Martin took a deep breath and knocked on Jon’s door.

He was immediately struck by the irrational fear that Jon would think that _he_ was Jane Prentiss, knocking, and then he wouldn’t open the door and Martin would knock again and then he definitely _would_ be Jane Prentiss, and Martin would never find out if Jon was okay and Jon would stay in his flat and be terrified and--

There was a long pause of nothing, in which Martin managed to cycle through an entire apocalyptic scenario, and then the tiniest hint of footsteps. Martin felt his whole body relax as the door unlocked and Jon appeared, looking up at him skeptically.

“You know that I can hear you through the door,” he said. 

Martin’s brain was just catching up to that as Jon said it, and he smiled sheepishly. God, he was stupid, and his anxiety was even stupider. Of course Jon wouldn’t mistake him for Jane Prentiss. Jon was incapable of _mistaking_ someone for someone else, because he could see into their heads and could hear Martin’s extremely un-wormy thoughts. _Hopefully_ un-wormy thoughts.

Martin also took a second to process that Jon was wearing a very big, cozy-looking jumper with a decal of an old cityscape and PRAGUE written on it, jeans (Martin could not have imagined Jon in denim), and socks. Martin had never seen him out of his usual semi-formal, octogenarian library style. It was unbearably cute, and so Martin resolved to ignore it immediately.

“Hi,” he said, blinking.

Jon held up a finger and closed his eyes. “Okay, in order. No, I have not been attacked by Jane Prentiss. You aren’t stupid. This,” gesturing to his jumper, “was not originally mine. And ‘octogenarian’ is...a little strong.”

Martin could feel his face and neck heating up, with both embarrassment and wariness. “Do you have to do that _every_ time?”

Jon sighed, massaging the bridge of his nose. “...no, you’re right, I don’t. I’ll...refrain.”

“No, it’s okay, I just,” Martin started, waving his hands a little. “You always pick out the most embarrassing...never mind. That’s not why I’m here. You’re okay.” Well, as okay as he could be when he looked exhausted.

“I’m fine, yes,” Jon said, the bags under his eyes glaring up at Martin.

“I just, you know, with the...since you guys got texts from me when I...yeah.”

“I understand.” Jon looked a bit uncomfortable, and then he continued: “Thank you? For checking up on me.”

“Oh, it’s...yeah. Do you need anything from the Archives, or…?”

Jon perked up, like he’d just remembered something, but also like he wasn’t very excited about it. “Ah, well. Yes.” He leaned forward a bit, peering around his doorframe and prompting Martin to take a hurried step back. “Come in, actually.”

“Oh,” Martin said.

Jon was already retreating into his flat. Martin took a second to actually understand and then jolted forward to follow him.

It wasn’t that Martin had _expected_ otherwise, but he still noted how absolutely boring Jon’s flat was. A sofa, a small kitchen to the side, a hallway to the other. Some pictures on the walls, but none that looked recent. A bookcase. And, of course, papers everywhere.

Jon’s office was always a bit of a controlled mess, but it seemed that that was just a work formality, and here he didn’t deem the _controlled_ part of that necessary. Martin thought there might be a coffee table somewhere under the folders and papers and newspaper clippings. There was a half-empty takeout box on the floor, and it appeared that Jon did not actually sit on his sofa to work, because his laptop was also on the floor. Uncomfortable. Also very cute. A new thought to suppress.

“Jane Prentiss gave a statement to the Institute,” Jon said, shuffling through the papers. Martin stood awkwardly in the doorway. “I’ve found a few references to it, but, of course, no one was allowed to write anything _helpful_ before I became Head Archivist, so I don’t know exactly where it is.”

“Do you want me to…?” Martin asked.

“It was some time in 2014,” Jon continued, apparently finding whatever he was looking for and turning back around with a paper in his hand. “I think. If the worms originate from her, and we’re still finding them around the Institute, then it’s important that we find out as much as we can about her.”

“You know there’s not going to be some ‘this is how you stop me’ checklist in there,” Martin said. 

Jon gave Martin a _look_. “Any information is better than none.” He held out the paper for Martin to take. It was a handwritten list of numbers. “I need you to find her statement. This is a list of statements and other files that might have some information. Some of them might be up in Research. I’d do it myself, but it’s impossible to think while I’m in the Archive, at present.”

“Have you talked to Elias about it?” Martin asked. “I mean...he knows about your _thing_ , right? And I suppose this would count as a sort of workplace hazard, wouldn’t it?”

“Elias spends so much time trying to make people think he’s smart that he forgets to actually be,” Jon drawled. “He advised that I wear headphones.”

Martin snorted as Jon rolled his eyes. “Right. That’d sure help. Why didn’t _you_ think of that?”

“My intellect is simply no match for him. Anyway.” Jon flapped his hand at Martin. “Please ask Tim and Sasha to help you. This is a high priority.”

“Right, yeah, of course,” Martin said, nodding. “All hands on deck, right?”--with a little laugh. 

Jon was already rounding the coffee table. He sat down heavily on his sofa, eyes darting over the mass of papers. He let out a long breath, seeming to lose himself for a moment. Martin just watched him, list in hand. 

Jon looked like he hadn’t slept the night before, or if he had it hadn’t been much. There was a certain slowness to his movements that fought against a nervous energy that might have been from caffeine. As Martin looked him over, Jon met his gaze.

“I’m going to take a nap later,” he said defensively.

Martin smiled a little but hid it as well as he could. “Okay. I wasn’t going to say it.”

“You don’t have to,” Jon said, tapping his temple. 

“Just take care of yourself,” Martin chanced. “Not much use staying at home if you’re going to, well...”

Jon sighed and slid down from the sofa to the floor, in front of the coffee table. “I have survived this long, Martin,” he said. 

And Martin was starting to think that it was mostly due to other people. Jon shot him a sharp look at that, but then turned squarely to his laptop instead of Martin. Something about being in his own home, instead of his place of work, must have been making Jon break some of his usual, more severe, persona. Only just a little, though.

“Again, I appreciate the checkup,” Jon said. “Finding the Prentiss statement is important.”

“I’ll look. Can you, um, can you keep your phone with you? Just in case?” Martin asked. Jon tilted his head back against the sofa cushions and then managed to crane his arm at an odd angle to feel around between them. He retrieved and held up his phone like a trophy.

“If I get eaten by supernatural worms, you will be the first to know.”

“Comforting,” Martin said. He folded up the paper and gave a little wave that Jon didn’t see. “Actually take a nap, okay?”

Jon hummed as his fingers clattered on his laptop keyboard.

\--

There was a stark difference between imagining doing something and actually getting it done, something that Martin realized when he got back to the Archives and looked into the storage room, list of file numbers in front of him. 

He’d organized a few boxes, had managed to put together some missing pages in others, and he thought that he’d made a sizable dent in the past few weeks. But when faced with the task of finding a handful of specific statements, he understood the actual scope of it. He supposed that he didn’t have much better to do, so he could submit himself to sitting and combing through boxes and shelves and filing cabinets. 

He started with the statements he’d already organized, but there was only a small section of statements given in 2014. To be thorough he checked a couple of years on either side, but none of the statements mentioned anything about Jane Prentiss, hives, or worms.

So Martin was going to have to dive into the rest of the room. He had no idea where to start. Sasha and Tim said that they would be happy to take over whenever he ran out of steam. Sasha had spent the most time in the document storage, even before she worked in the Archives, but she couldn’t remember if she’d ever seen anything from Jane Prentiss. The statement might have been given only shortly before the changing of the guard in the Archives, so it could be anywhere.

As Martin walked by some of the filing cabinets on the right wall, he heard a crunch and felt something pop under his shoe. He froze and carefully lifted his foot. A dark stain was smeared across the floor, with the flattened body of a fat white worm. He grimaced and started searching the floor all around him. He wasn’t sure how a worm had gotten by all of them and into this room, and if there were any more it might be a problem. 

The worm had been right in front of a filing cabinet, and as he scanned the floor around it he saw that a folder had fallen from a stack and was now tucked in between the filing cabinet and the one next to it. And there, crawling out from under it, was another worm. 

Martin wrinkled his nose and carefully reached for the folder, brushing past a bit of spider web. With the folder he coaxed the worm out from between the filing cabinets, and once it was out in the open he stomped on it with more force than was probably necessary. 

A tiny bit of worm goo had splattered onto the side of the folder. Martin could wipe it off when he cleaned up the rest of the mess here. Avoiding the little black flecks, he opened the folder and skimmed the introduction. 

Martin took a deep breath. He glanced down at the squashed worms, then back to the folder. There was no way. This wasn’t a coincidence.

_#0142302_

_Statement of Jane Prentiss, regarding a wasp’s nest in her attic._

Martin slammed the folder closed and stepped back, suddenly sure that there had to be other worms somewhere. There were none in his immediate line of sight, but he couldn’t be positive. He might have to get the fire extinguisher.

But first he had to deal with the statement. He slipped off his shoe so he wouldn’t track worm insides all over the floor and went back out to his desk. 

“Need to tap out?” Sasha asked. Martin shook his head quickly and held up the folder.

“Got it.”

“That was quick,” Tim said, eyebrows raised.

“There are worms,” Martin said. “Two of them. In there. I think I got them, but...they were right next to this.”

“And that’s Jane Prentiss?” Sasha confirmed.

“Doing some light reading, were they?” Tim said dryly.

Martin sat and pulled out his phone, shooting a quick _Found it_ to Jon. There was no immediate response, but Martin didn’t expect one.

“I’m gonna...I’ll give it a look-through,” Martin said. Sasha nodded.

 _I itch all the time_.

Martin hadn’t read many statements himself, let alone any of the special ones that Jon had been recording on tape. Now, looking at these words, with the knowledge that the person who wrote them was going to be recounting something _real_ , he felt a strange shimmer in the air. The feeling of someone watching you when you aren’t looking. Not unlike the feeling he got when he knew Jon was hearing his thoughts.

_It is not the patterns that enthrall me, I’m not one of those fools chasing fractals; no, it’s what sings behind them. Sings that I am beautiful. Sings that I am a home. That I can be fully consumed by what loves me._

Martin swallowed around a rock. Singing. Worms, parasites, _singing_. He needed to call Jon right away. The shimmer in the air stared at him, stared at the statement through him, and he had to finish reading it. He found that he was murmuring a bit aloud.

He made his way through, past the hive and the singing and crystals in shops and the supplementary material that talked about Jane Prentiss’s admission to a hospital, showing dates and records and the brief statement of a member of the hospital staff. The hive, singing but not in a voice, calling out for a home. 

Jon, sitting in his office, eyes glued to the wall, telling Martin that he knew what the voices were saying, even if they didn’t speak in words.

Martin blinked a few times and the strange drive in him, the one forcing him to keep reading to the end, faded as suddenly as it had come. He looked up at Sasha and Tim, who were both involved in their own work.

“There’s a hive in here,” he said, the realization coming to him only as he said it aloud. His voice was quieter than he’d intended.

Immediately he felt a panicked wariness, eyes scanning the floor and walls and ceiling. The office felt very small all of a sudden, encroaching from all sides, pregnant with hidden things that crawled and squirmed and whispered songs into Jon’s ears. Tim glanced up and caught the look on his face.

“Hm?”

“The…” Martin looked back down to the statement, at the neat handwriting about _singing_ and _itching._ “There’s a _hive_ in here.”

“In the statement?” Tim asked, furrowing his brow. 

“No.” Could Martin hear any squirming? Any of the sounds that had been outside his door for two weeks? Why wasn’t there a smell? “No. I mean, _yes,_ there is, but...in the Archives.”

“Wait, does it _say_ that in there?” Sasha asked incredulously. 

“Where?” Tim followed.

Martin pulled out his phone and quickly found Jon’s contact. His fingers were picking up a tremor. “Jane Prentiss had a wasp’s nest in her attic, or some kind of hive, and it _sang_ to her, and that’s what pulled her in and infested her and--” Martin hit call and pressed the phone to his ear. “And Jon has been hearing singing, except not with words and it’s saying the same stuff Prentiss wrote here and he only hears it when he’s _here_.”

“Wait, what?” Tim asked. “And you think it’s the...is Prentiss in here?” He got up and circled his desk, heading for the fire extinguisher on the wall.

“I don’t know,” Martin said. “I mean, don’t _panic,_ I’m not sure, it’s just a…”

One ring, two rings, three...

 _“Martin?”_ Jon’s voice was rough and a bit slow, like he’d just woken up. Martin could feel bad about that later. Tim was standing by the fire extinguisher, not keeping his back to the wall. His eyes were darting around.

“I found it. Prentiss’s statement. It’s…” He didn’t know exactly what to say. “It’s worms.”

 _“Yes, we know that already,”_ Jon said, a bit impatiently. _“Is there anything about how--”_

“They sing, Jon,” Martin breathed. “The worms sing. They sang to Prentiss, from a...from a hive? They sang about how good she was and how she should come join them and...”

_“A hive.”_

“Where would it even be?” Sasha asked no one in particular. She was also up, already grabbing the Prentiss statement from Martin’s desk and skimming it. “We’re the basement. The walls?”

“A hive,” Martin repeated to Jon. “I mean, that has to be it, right? It’s too much of a coincidence to...it’s what you’ve been hearing, isn’t it?

Jon took an audible breath, slow in and slow out. Martin put him on speakerphone. _“In the Archives...yes? Wait. I’m coming in.”_ There was the sound of him getting up, the rustle of clothing. Martin hoped he hadn’t fallen asleep on the floor, if he’d managed to get to sleep at all.

Sasha’s eyes flicked back and forth over the pages. “Jon said that he was hearing this kind of thing?”

“What were the voices saying?” Martin asked Jon.

 _“I don’t_ know,” Jon said. _“Not exactly. I already told you the basics. Just...calling to me? To find them. So that I can,”_ another breath, more rustling of clothing, _“So I can come home to them. That I belong to them, or they belong to me. But not in those words? It’s hard to explain.”_

Martin let out a short breath, almost like a desperate laugh, but not quite. “Right. Okay. Great.”

 _“I’ll meet you by the door,”_ Jon said. _“Upstairs.”_ Then he hung up.

 _“Sings that I am a home,”_ Sasha read to herself. “Lovely.” Her eyes flicked up, scanning the walls.

Martin for the first time noticed a small sound, constant and a bit rough. Like static. His eyes landed on one of the drawers of his desk and he cautiously pulled it open, half expecting it to be full of worms. 

There were no worms. Only a tape recorder. Running. With a tape inside.

Martin certainly hadn’t put it there. Sasha was turning and saying something to Tim about talking to Elias, while Martin reached into the drawer and stopped the recording with a _click._ Had one of them put it in there while he was in document storage? That would be strange. What would they have been trying to record?

“Um…” Martin started, not sure if he should bring it up when there were other things to worry about. “So upstairs.”

“Oh, I’m 100% in favor of getting out of here,” Tim said. He took the fire extinguisher from the wall and hefted it under his arm.

“I don’t think we’re under immediate threat,” Sasha said, but she was putting her things into her shoulder bag. “Jon’s been hearing this stuff for a while, right? And we haven’t seen or heard anything else.”

“There are worms in here every day,” Martin pointed out. He didn’t have anything to pack up, given that his bedroom was right by the office. 

“I sure love my normal job,” Tim said.

“This could be a...I mean, I could just be overreacting,” Martin tried.

“I hope so,” Sasha said. 

\--

Jon was still wearing the jumper and jeans when he showed up, and Martin could see Tim’s eyebrows go up when he walked in. Martin had been chatting nervously with Rosie, who had been surprised but pleased to see them out of the Archives during the day.

“Good to see you, boss,” Tim said dryly.

“Statement?” Jon said first. He was a little out of breath.

“You don’t think it’s Prentiss, do you?” Sasha asked as she handed the folder over. Jon flipped it open.

“I’d have heard.” He narrowed his eyes as he read. “If it was a person.”

“What if there are worms in her head?” Martin asked. Jon glanced over at Rosie and stepped in closer to the three of them. 

“I don’t think she’s here. Or at least not last I was here. We know she can talk and use a phone. I’d have heard _something_ coherent.”

“We should talk to Elias,” Sasha said. “Get him to, I don’t know, fumigate?”

“I suppose. I might know where it is,” Jon said. His expression was growing in concern and determination as he read. “If it’s a...a hive.”

“Great. How about we bust it open and I spray everything until it’s dead?” Tim suggested, gesturing with the fire extinguisher.

The hair that Jon hadn’t managed to pull into a bun was falling in his face, and he pushed it back behind his ear like he was angry at it. “I need to hear. I might be able to...I might be able to find it. Where it’s loudest.”

“I’ll talk to Elias,” Sasha said.

“Do you need me to call him, dear?” Rosie asked, and Martin realized that they were not being very quiet at all.

“Yes, please,” Sasha said. “You guys go down. Don’t get...got.”

“That’s what this is for,” Tim said, tapping the canister. They started for the stairs.

“Be safe,” Rosie called over, and Jon shot her a look. Martin smiled to cover for it. 

Though they’d just been in the Archives, going back down with the knowledge that there might be lots and lots of worms there was making Martin’s chest clench. He kept an eye on Jon’s face as they descended, waiting for some kind of confirmation that he could hear the singing. His expression didn’t change significantly, until they reached the main office and he stopped suddenly.

“Well, you got a bead on it?” Tim asked, fire extinguisher at the ready.

Jon took a breath and shook his head. “No.”

“Wait, what?” Martin asked, eyes widening. “Nothing?”

“What, did they pack it up and carry it out?” Tim asked. “Are they asleep?”

“I’d still be able to hear it,” Jon murmured. Martin was scanning the floor for worms, but he looked up at that.

“You can hear people’s dreams?” he asked incredulously.

“Not the time,” Jon said. He opened his office door to peek inside.

“Wait, so it’s just completely gone?” Martin clarified again. “Wasn’t it...it was too loud for you to work, wasn’t it?”

“It _was_ ,” Jon said, looking just as uncomfortable as Martin felt. 

“Excellent,” Tim drawled.

“It was loudest in here, I think,” Jon said. He went to his desk, rounding it and standing where his chair usually was. He looked around and then nodded. “Over there.”

He was looking to his right, to a wall lined with bookshelves. It’s where Martin had caught him staring some days, when he lost focus. Three floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covered the wall. Martin was half expecting some tidal wave of worms to come pouring out from between the books, but there was nothing.

Had he actually been overreacting? Was there nothing here? Maybe there was some other, less terrible explanation for the voices Jon had been hearing. Occam’s Razor meant that it was _unlikely_ that there was some completely unassociated reason, but there was still a chance. It didn’t have to be worms.

“You think it was in the walls?” Tim asked. “Where would it have gone?”

“I don’t know,” Jon said. He went to one of the bookshelves and pushed on it a little. He was small and Martin was positive that he wasn’t very strong--fortunately, Jon didn’t say anything about that thought--and nothing happened. 

“I can probably move it,” Tim offered. He set down the fire extinguisher by his feet and gripped the side of the bookshelf. There weren’t actually that many books on it, more folders and files, but it was still heavy-looking. He pulled for a moment, arms straining, and then there was a _crack_ as the corner of the bookshelf pulled away from the spot where it had settled on the floor. “That’s stuck in there pretty tight. Martin, you want to…?” 

Martin nodded briskly. He didn’t know exactly how to help, but he grabbed a shelf and tried to pull. Together they managed, over the course of a few minutes, to pull the shelf a couple of inches from the wall, enough for them to see behind it. 

There certainly was a wall there. Martin felt around it, and it also felt just like a wall, if not a bit dusty. He turned back to Jon to ask something, but the question died in his mind when he saw Jon’s face.

Jon was staring at them with wide, far-away eyes. “Wait,” he said, furrowing his brow. 

“What?”

“It’s…” Jon was leaning against his desk heavily, and he cocked his head. “It’s coming back.”

“Oh _lovely,”_ Tim said. 

“The singing?” Martin asked, stepping away from the shelf. 

“What?” Jon asked back, like he hadn’t heard Martin. “I can’t…” He pushed himself away from the desk and wandered past Martin unsteadily. 

“Are you okay?”

“Um, guys,” Tim said, voice rising.

Jon was staring at the shelves and the wall behind them like he was solving a maths problem. And then Martin could hear it, softly, muffled by the wall. A sound like wet pasta, maybe, slimy and terrible and the wall behind the bookshelf, which must have been much thinner than it seemed, started to bulge out.

“Guys,” Tim said again, almost a squeak, and he grabbed the fire extinguisher. 

There was a moment of stillness. 

Then the wall burst open and a wave of worms, their white, shining bodies piled on top of each other, spurted out. The force of it pushed on the bookshelf and it tipped. Martin shouted and Tim pulled the pin on the fire extinguisher, but Jon didn’t _move_ , and that made the muscles in Martin’s body finally release.

He lunged forward and grabbed Jon just as the bookshelf was hit with another wave of worms and toppled over. Martin felt something small hit his head and his arm, and he could feel them crawling. He pulled Jon toward him, jerking him off of his feet and into Martin’s chest as the bookshelf hit the ground, cracking against the corner of Jon’s desk as it went and splintering. Papers flew up and around and Tim was yelling something.

“What is _happening?”_ Martin heard Sasha’s voice come from the main office. There were worms spilling out onto the floor from what was now a clear and massive crack in the wall, and Martin pulled Jon back out of the room. Jon stumbled after him, fighting between whatever he was hearing and focusing on moving his body. Tim was spraying the floor wildly, and he followed them out, closing Jon’s door behind them.

Martin’s heart was about to seize and he was going to die, with how hard it was beating. Jon seemed to be regaining some of his bearings and he pulled his hand from Martin’s. Martin hadn’t realized that he’d even been holding it. He had other things to worry about.

“What the hell?” Sasha demanded, and then she saw the worms squirming out from under the door. 

“We found it!” Tim gritted.

“The fire suppression system,” Jon said, pinching his own arm hard and wincing. “Elias should have changed it to…” he trailed off and then shook himself back to attention. “To CO₂.” 

Tim sprayed the space under Jon’s door and the worms there writhed and fell still, only to be replaced with more. Martin’s thoughts were racing, and his eyes landed on his own winter coat. He could sacrifice it. It had been cheap anyway. He pulled it from the chair it was draped over and went to Jon’s office door, stuffing it into the crack. He could feel the bodies of worms under it as they squished and crushed, and he wanted to pull away more than anything. He jumped back, shaking out his hands wildly.

“Good thinking,” Sasha said. 

“Experience,” Martin croaked.

Then he felt something touching him and jumped. He saw Jon pull back from his shoulder, throwing a worm to the floor and stomping on it. Martin blinked at him. 

“Thanks,” he said.

“There’s another on your head,” Jon replied. 

Martin cursed and shook his head violently, combing through his hair. He saw a worm fall and then Jon’s shoe crushing it. 

“I’m gonna run out of juice on this soon,” Tim warned.

“Let’s just go back upstairs!” Sasha said. 

“We can’t let all of these documents get…” Jon started. He lost focus again. “Get.” He whirled around to face the door. “Too soon. We...it wasn’t…”

“What?” Sasha asked. 

“We’re too early. She wasn’t ready,” Jon said. His eyes widened. “She’s here.” Martin’s stomach plummeted.

“Oh my god. Upstairs!” Sasha said again, louder this time. Martin’s coat was moving as the pressure against it built, and it would only hold them for a few more seconds. Martin had managed to get his hands on a few fire extinguishers, which he’d been keeping in his room. Which was sealed, but only had the one door. He’d be trapped.

“She’s going to _destroy the_ …” Jon said, fighting for words. “We can’t just leave her in…” His eyes snapped up to Martin, suddenly laser-focused, and then he took off toward Martin’s room.

He’d heard about the fire extinguishers from Martin’s mind, over all of the noise. “Jon!” Martin called after him. Oh god. He was going to trap _himself_. 

Tim gripped the nearly-empty fire extinguisher and braced himself. There was a pile of worm corpses spread around the bottom of the door.

“Get out of here so we can use the fire system!” Sasha said, looking at Martin in incredulity. “What the hell is Jon doing?”

“I don’t know!” Martin cried. He didn’t know what to do. Should he follow Jon? He might be able to pull him out and get him up the stairs. But what if he couldn’t? What if they were both trapped in there, underground in a sealed room, surrounded by worms. Like Martin’s flat but so much worse.

An ear-splitting noise filled the Archives, and Martin looked to see Sasha with her hand on the fire alarm. Martin had to get Jon. He couldn’t leave him there, especially if they were going to try and flood the whole place with CO₂. 

The handle of the door to Jon’s office turned.


	7. Bad Very Quickly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the chaotic upload schedule. Here, I brought you some worms.

“Jon!” Martin shouted over the piercing alarm. “Jesus Christ. Jon!”

Martin knew that it was stupid, knew that he should be trying to escape, because there were thousands of worms just down the hall that wanted to burrow into him and eat him from within, but he couldn’t leave Jon. Who he saw darting into the humidity-controlled room in front of him. 

Martin stumbled in after him. Jon was making a beeline to the collection of fire extinguishers Martin had been hoarding, in a cluster at the foot of his cot. 

“We need to _leave!”_ Martin yelled. Jon was picking up a fire extinguisher, and when he saw Martin he threw it over and grabbed a second one. 

The fire extinguisher hit Martin’s hands with a thick thud and he stared down at it. “What...no, Jon, there are too many for us to kill them all ourselves!”

“She’s going to destroy the Archives!” Jon yelled back. 

“Who?” Martin asked, even though he already knew the answer. Also, it didn’t matter, because the Archives were not more important than the two of them leaving alive. “Whatever, that’s not...we need to _go!”_

There was a look in Jon’s eyes that unsettled Martin, a combination of wild energy, confusion, and fear. It was more emotion than Martin had ever seen on him altogether, let alone all at once. He gripped his fire extinguisher and went to the door, seeming not so much that he was ignoring Martin as that he was immediately distracted.

“It’ll take too long,” Jon said, almost too quietly for Martin to hear. He was peering out into the hall. “By the time the...the fire system goes…” he trailed off, shaking his head quickly. “She’ll have already…”

It seemed almost like he was having a hard time catching his breath, for all that he couldn’t focus. Martin couldn’t imagine--was he hearing the thoughts of every single worm, or was it all coalescing into one overwhelming train of thought? Either way, it seemed to be dominating his mind.

But, once again, it didn’t _matter,_ because once they left the basement Jon would be able to think again and he’d realize that staying down here was a very bad idea. 

There was yelling from the office proper, probably Sasha, and Martin couldn’t make out what she was saying. He came up behind Jon, fully intending to push him out and drag him to the stairs in whatever way was necessary, but Jon stumbled back against his chest as he reached the door, jolting as they collided. 

At the same time Martin saw down the short hallway as a mass of worms started crawling with alarming speed toward them. “Oh, right, of course, _of course,”_ he hissed, a familiar panic rising in him. “Jon!”

“Don’t talk, spray them!” Jon yelled. He fumbled with his fire extinguisher and, at the last second, managed to figure it out enough for a jet of CO₂ to shoot out of the nozzle. He was actually going to try and take out all of these worms himself? They darted across the floor toward them like a wave of some liquid, too fast for any real animal. Martin’s ears were starting to go numb to the fire alarm.

It was too late for them to leave now, at least without blasting several thousand worms. Trapped again. Martin started spraying with his own fire extinguisher, counting down the paltry few seconds they had before they’d be forced to close the door and lock themselves in. Why had he followed Jon? Why had Jon run in the first place? A comedy of errors, they were. A steady flow of bad decisions.

It would be unrealistic for him to break form now, he figured. Maybe all of the gas they were pumping into the air would make them go loopy and pass out before they had a chance to notice the worms eating them. 

Martin’s resolve to spray the worms ended the moment he saw one of them _jump._ That was not something they were supposed to be able to do, on top of all of the other things they were not supposed to be able to do, and he only just managed to get out of the way of a horde of them leaping in his direction. He made an undignified noise and pulled Jon back. He slammed the door, pressing his full weight against it and locking it. Jon almost lost his balance and seemed lost, staring at Martin with wide eyes and then coming to full attention at once, blasting the bottom of the door and Martin’s shoes with freezing CO₂.

A couple of worms writhed and fell motionless at Martin’s feet, curling in on themselves as they died. Martin dropped the fire extinguisher and started frantically patting down his whole body. He was still leaning heavily against the door. It had a lock, but he didn’t trust anything anymore. 

Jon was still just staring at him, staring _through_ him, holding the fire extinguisher in front of him like a shield. His lips were moving slightly, absently. Something disturbingly to the effect of _it’s okay, you’re so warm, let us in._

“Jon?” Martin prompted, voice thick with worry. Jon jumped and then started blinking rapidly. At the same time, the fire alarm cut off, leaving Martin’s ears feeling thick and echoing with a high ringing. 

But he could still hear the sounds of squirming behind him, could feel the slight vibrations against the door as more and more worms moved past it and against it. 

“Oh god,” Martin said, coughing out something that was either a laugh or a sob or maybe both. “I hate them so much.” 

He was trapped again, stuck in a room with worms outside and the only things he could say about it were that there was no knocking and he wasn’t alone.

Jon started pacing around the room, like he was looking for something. “We can’t stay in here. She’s destroying statements.”

“I’m not keen on going down with the ship,” Martin said. “And _you_ shouldn’t be, either.”

Jon didn’t seem to have anything to say to that. Instead, he paused by the wall. “I’m...why did you follow me?”

Martin blinked. “Why did I...why didn’t I let you run into a death trap by yourself, you mean?”

Jon grimaced. “It’s not a...a _death trap_.”

“Right, and what do you call this, then?” Martin asked. There was no pressure pushing against him on the door but he was still hesitant to leave it. Then again, he was also hesitant to be anywhere near potential worms wiggling through. This was a sealed room, he reminded himself. “Because this isn’t exactly saving the Archives either, is it?”

“Okay, this may not have been my best idea,” Jon allowed.

“You think?” Martin shot back, and when Jon flinched he regretted it. “I was trapped in this for two weeks. Alone. I don’t want that to happen to...you know, to someone else.” He felt the tiny vibrations of movement through the door and bit his lip. “Okay, you know what, I’ll text Sasha and we’ll figure out how to get out of here. It’ll be fine. Just fine.” 

His fingers were shaking as he pulled out his phone and tried to type, but he’d managed to wrap around all the way from panic to Management Mode. Whenever they got out of this, _if_ they got out of this, he’d crash and have a panic attack, but for now he was remaining functional through sheer shock and willpower.

“They want us out there so badly,” Jon said grimly, and when Martin looked up from his phone he mirrored Jon’s sickly expression.

“Too bad for them,” Martin said, trying to keep his voice together. “I’m good in here.” Martin realized, as he watched his phone desperately, that there was no service this deep in the basement. He took a stuttering breath. “They’ll have to work a lot harder if they want to change that.”

“We...I...we can’t just stand here,” Jon said. 

“What are we supposed to _do_ , Jon?” Martin asked. 

“I don’t know! _”_ Jon said. “But she’s destroying...oh.” He froze. “Here she comes.”

A jolt of fear rocketed down Martin’s body and he strained to hear outside of the room. There was just the squirming of tiny, wet bodies, enough to make him throw up if he weren’t so laser-focused on not dying. “Oh,” he echoed, voice ghostly. 

“This doesn’t make any sense. Why couldn’t I hear her before?” Jon asked. His eyes shot to the door. “I can hear her now. Why couldn’t I…”

_“Archivist.”_

The voice was raspy and choked, clogged with crawling things. Martin jumped and pressed more of his weight against the door. She hadn’t spoken, not once in the two weeks he’d been besieged, but he knew that it was her immediately. He was pretty sure there weren’t any keys for this room in easily accessible places, especially with the mess that had been made of Jon’s office. She wouldn’t be able to get in. 

“Oh god, oh god,” he murmured anyway, sinking a little bit against the door. 

“She’s angry,” Jon said, voice low. 

“You _think?”_ Martin squeaked.

“She was planning a...a…” Jon started, getting distracted again. He shook his head more violently than was probably necessary. “She doesn’t know that I can hear her. She was planning to attack the Archives...why not the whole Institute? What’s special about…?”

Martin both heard and felt the vibration of the door behind him as worm-ridden knuckles met wood. _Knock knock._ He gasped and stumbled away from the door, whirling around to face it as though it were about to cave in the moment he left. It held. _Knock knock knock._ She had to be making fun of him now.

And, of course, he’d forgotten that there was a small window in this door. Right there, right behind where his head had been, lurked a pair of eyes and stringy black hair, worms and sunken skin and _holes_ and Martin hadn’t ever seen her face when she was at his flat. He choked on his own breath and backed all the way up to the cot, sitting down on it hard.

“Is she thinking anything specific about how we can _kill her?”_ he hissed, unable to look away.

“She’s thinking a little more about how she can kill _me,”_ Jon snapped back. He squeezed his eyes shut and massaged his temples. “It’s so loud.”

Martin took a deep breath. “They have to be coming. Sasha and Tim.”

 _Knock knock._ “What tunnels?” Jon asked under his breath. 

He was completely scattered, Martin could see. That made sense. The worms had already been driving him up a wall, so much so that he’d been staying away from the Archives. Now there were about a million of them within spitting distance. And their queen. Their hive. How many thoughts of her own did she have?

Martin struggled with words for a moment. “We need to focus.”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” Jon shot back. Martin winced. Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best angle to take. A bit like saying ‘stop panicking.’ Notoriously unhelpful. 

“Sorry, sorry.”

“Where did Prentiss come from? Why couldn’t I hear her?” Jon was pacing again, looking around the room like a magical new door would appear. “There’s no way she got this close without me hearing her first. I can hear her just fine now.” He rubbed his face. “If they could be _quiet_ for two seconds.”

“That’s...I mean that’s weird, I get it, um. But can we think about this more when we’re not about to get eaten?” Martin asked. Jon shot him a look.

“She got in _somehow,_ and I didn’t hear a goddamn thought until she was...already…” Jon trailed off and bit at his lip, eyes locked on the door. Martin watched him as his face slowly morphed into a blank frown. The moment seemed to take forever.

“Jon?” Martin prompted. 

The knocking stopped all of a sudden, and Jane Prentiss’s head moved away from the window. There was enough of a corner between the sealed room and the bullpen, so even if Martin had the courage to go look through the window after her he probably wouldn’t have seen anything. It was disturbingly quiet. There was a long moment of silence, until even the slithering and squelching of the worms faded. 

Martin bit his lip and glanced back and forth between Jon and the door. “Is she--?”

“Trying to bait us out,” Jon said. “Like I said, she doesn’t know that I can hear her.” He looked troubled. “Although it’s harder than usual to tell exactly what she’s thinking. There’s a bit of interference.”

“Of what?” Martin asked, realizing what Jon meant immediately afterward. He was just as scattered as Jon, it seemed. “Oh! Right. Yeah.” 

“She’s trying to get us at the stairs,” Jon said. “Or that’s what she’s planning.”

“Well,” Martin started, entirely unsure where he was going. “Um. I mean, that’s probably a...a good plan. Since that’s the way out.”

Jon continued to stare, like he could see Prentiss through the walls. Martin was running through a million different possibilities in his head, and none of them ended well. They could try to just make a break for it, which would probably result in two worm piles on the ground, shaped a bit like the two of them. Even if they went spraying the fire extinguishers, any time that would buy them would be swallowed up by the fact that they’d be moving more slowly. They could try to fake her out and duck into another one of the rooms instead, but that would leave them equally trapped in a less secure location. Or they could sit on their hands until Tim and Sasha figured out how to rescue them. Provided they were even working on that.

They had to be. They wouldn’t just run. They cared.

“Tunnels,” Jon said, bursting back to life. Martin yelped in surprise. God, he was on edge. “There are tunnels that she was in...she isn’t thinking much about it except she’s asking all of them to...to come out and help? She’s been planning this as some sort of assault but we found her too soon, and she doesn’t have as big of a hive as she wanted.”

“Tunnels?” Martin echoed. “I’m...I’m not going to go through some...crawlspace, or something. With worms after me. Just so you know.”

“My office,” Jon said. “Not a crawlspace...the wall? That doesn’t make any sense.” 

“That’s where the worms _came from,”_ Martin said incredulously.

“But there is a way that she got into the Archives, and it also has to be a way out.”

There was a noise from the main office, something that sounded a lot like a filing cabinet being knocked over. 

“You’re _sure_ there’s a way out through your office?” Martin asked. 

Jon paused a bit too long for Martin’s comfort. “Yes.”

“And we have to run through a sea of worms to get there.”

“Maybe.”

Wonderful. _Wonderful._ Martin was pretty sure that the only thing he wanted to do _less_ than that was stay in the room and wait to be overrun, though both were at the very bottom of his list.

He took a steeling breath and stood from the cot, going to the door and peering out of the window. The area was almost completely empty, save for some terrible slime the worms had left behind. Just around the corner he could see Tim’s desk, which looked like it had been ransacked, and nothing else. No worms. “The coast is clear here, at least.”

“Text Sasha,” Jon said. Martin turned. 

“No service.”

“Not here, I know. We want it to send when we’re out there. Say that we’re safe and to pull the fire suppression.”

“That’s, um, well that’s what I would call a _lie_ ,” Martin said evenly. “Because we aren’t safe.”

“I _know_ that,” Jon said. “But hopefully by the time she gets it we will be.”

“In those ‘tunnels.’”

Jon nodded, looking less convinced of his own plan than Martin would have liked.

“What, so we run, go into your office, hope she hasn’t put any worms there, jump through the gaping hole in the wall into secret tunnels we don’t know anything about, and hope they don’t get flooded with CO₂ and suffocate us?”

Jon traded his first fire extinguisher for a new one and pulled the pin. “And we spray them on the way.”

Martin let out a heavy breath. “Right. Great. Of course. Yes.” He had the fleeting thought that perhaps the person who got them trapped in the first place should not be the one making the escape plans, but Jon also had more information. 

“We have to make it look like we’re heading for the stairs until the last second,” Jon continued.

“Why is my life so ridiculous?” Martin murmured. Jon gave him a look and Martin sighed. “Yeah. Got it. Fake-out.”

“Text Sasha. We have to go now.”

“Yeah, I know,” Martin said. He pulled out his phone, hesitating before Sasha’s contact. He let out a steady breath. _If you’re by it set the fire system off now. We’re safe._ “Okay. Death trap part two, ready to go.”

Jon rolled his eyes and went to the door. So they were really just going to do this. In movies they always planned things more before they did them. Martin supposed there wasn’t much time. At the last moment he remembered the corkscrew he'd been keeping by his bed and grabbed it. Hopefully he wouldn't have to act on the hunch he had about how to remove worms from skin.

“Ready?” Jon asked. The answer was definitely no, but Martin nodded instead. He had to be ready, because the longer they waited the longer they gave Jane Prentiss time to trap them completely.

Jon unlocked the door and eased it open. Martin kept an eye on the crack. The piles of worm corpses weren’t moving, were they? He couldn’t tell. He didn’t think they were. The fire extinguisher felt almost comically light in his adrenaline-pumped hands. 

Jon looked back to Martin and nodded, and they both snuck out of the room. It felt like stepping out into freezing rain, leaving the relative safety of the room a palpable loss. Right around the corner were the assistants’ desks, and beyond that there was the hall that led to the stairs. They just had to make it to Jon’s door. 

Martin kept his back to the wall, creeping forward like a child’s impression of a spy, pointing the nozzle of the fire extinguisher vaguely at the floor in front of him. Jon followed. Martin took a deep breath and peered around the corner. 

There were haphazard piles of more worm bodies, some squirming slightly and some motionless, especially around Jon’s open door. They left a black sludge all around them, which was soaking into the carpet and made it shiny and slick. And the smell--Martin forced himself not to vomit. Jon appeared to be having similar difficulties, if his grimace was anything to go by.

“I’m doing it,” Martin whispered as he took out his phone, reread his message, and hit send. Now their time was even more limited. They had to run for it. “Ready?”

“Wait,” Jon said, sudden urgency making Martin turn to look at him. His eyes were wide. “She’s not…”

“What?” Martin asked, heart somehow jumping higher into his throat.

As if on cue there was a _crack,_ one that sounded more structural than Martin would have liked. He whirled around and, finally, looked up. 

“How did she get _up there?”_ Jon yelped. “Go, go, go!”

Martin burst forward, panic suddenly making his brain fuzzy. He saw Jon’s door, just a few feet away. That was the goal. Just keep going forward. There was another crack, and then several of the ceiling panels gave up and collapsed inward, on top of him and all around him. 

One of the cracked panels hit Martin’s shoulder and he cried out, and then he felt them. All around him, landing around his feet and burying him up to the knee, on his shoulders and in his hair and all over his arms. Wet, squirming, sickly warm and smelling like everything that rotted. Everywhere.

“Jon!” Martin yelled, turning and nearly tripping. He felt like he was walking in sludge. It was happening too quickly for him to process. “Jon!” He remembered belatedly about the fire extinguisher and pulled the trigger so tight his hand hurt. The fear was acute and almost painful, the panic lighting up every nerve and emotion he had.

Jon was there, behind him, also covered in worms, also stumbling forward. He locked eyes with Martin.

 _“Oh, Archivist,”_ Prentiss hissed, faux sympathy doing a poor job of masking satisfaction. 

But she wasn’t between them and Jon’s door. There were just a few precious feet. Martin sprayed the floor in front of him. He was getting a bit lightheaded, though he couldn’t tell if it was from fear or lack of oxygen. He could feel worms _in_ him. Were they crawling in his nose, his ears?

“Jon! Go!” he yelled. Jon wasn’t moving. He grabbed Jon’s hand, and Jon dropped his fire extinguisher. His hands were limp. 

There was no time for this. Martin yanked Jon with him, overcoming a mound of worms around him and nearly slipping as he stepped over them. The vertigo shocked him. If he fell that would be it, he’d be covered in seconds. He probably wouldn’t be able to get back up.

He couldn’t spray worms and pull Jon at the same time. Jon looked up at him with blank eyes as he tugged the both of them to the door. Oh. Of course. 

There were worms _everywhere_ , all around them and on them, the entire force of the hive literally dropped on their heads and crawling into them. Jon had had trouble concentrating when the worms were on the other side of a door, down a hall, through a wall. Now they were touching him, thousands of them.

 _“Jon!”_ Martin thought helplessly, trying to make it as loud and pointy as he could. 

Jon’s head jerked, and Martin took that as the best sign he was going to get. 

_“Run, go, run, follow me, please, Jon!”_ Martin thought in panicked succession. If the worms were loud, maybe he could be louder. 

Jon locked eyes with him and that seemed to do it. He started moving by himself again, like he’d been forcibly returned to his own body. He gripped Martin’s hand. Martin kept it up as almost a chant, a desperate _keep going, keep moving, don’t stop, run, to the wall._

They made it through the door, but the worms were fast and were right there with them. Martin, somehow, felt the buzz of his phone in his pocket. Sasha had to pull the fire suppression _right now_. There was no time for him to respond or confirm.

The hole in the wall opened to some kind of space, one that seemed too large and continued into darkness. A tunnel. So it was real. Martin realized that he’d been letting his chant slip, and he started it again. Thinking so hard at Jon it was distracting himself. 

There was a clicking noise all around, then a hiss, and a loud _kshhhhhhhhhh,_ and the room filled with smoke.

As much relief as was possible, given the situation, flooded through Martin. Thank God for Sasha. He hauled Jon forward and climbed up onto the bookcase that had fallen. He wasn’t athletic by any means, but compared to Jon anyone was athletic. He had to get Jon up onto the bookcase and they’d be out. 

But Jon’s hand wasn’t in his anymore. When had they let go? He turned around and...and the room turned with him. White clouds dissipating into nothingness all around him and Jon there, but...was he...? Martin’s nose stung, a prickly, raw pain that continued down his throat. 

Oh. Breathing. Martin was breathing. He shouldn’t be breathing. Instead, he was breathing too fast. His head was clogged with paper. His chest hurt. There was a scream. A cloying, thick, inhuman screech. And a million other screams, tiny, inaudible but so impossibly loud, shaking the very ground. 

The tunnel. Where was the tunnel? Behind him. It needed to be in front of him. Jon needed to be there. 

Martin’s arms were heavy. He tried to run through what he knew about breathing CO₂, but it was hard to access. He knew it was bad. It was bad very quickly. 

Martin turned and lost his balance. He fell through the hole in the wall, scraping his knee and bruising his hand as he dropped down to a concrete floor. It didn’t hurt as much as it should. Jon. Jon! Jon. 

Martin got up. Somehow he still had his fire extinguisher. Jon was there, trying his best to get onto the bookshelf. Worms were falling from his hair and shoulders. Martin held out his hand, trying to find Jon’s. Jon was unsteady.

And then Jon’s hand finally locked around Martin’s in a terrified vice grip and Martin pulled him over the bookshelf and through the wall. They had to keep moving, despite the crawling and the creeping and the slick blood on their arms and faces. Jon tripped and Martin kept him up and then they ran. 

It was dark, and Martin managed to fumble with his phone to give them a flashlight. His head was thick and he felt like he was floating, each footstep soft and dreamy instead of firm and sharp. But there was _air_ here, air that actually filled his lungs all the way to the bottom and cleared his head. They were in a passage that sloped down and then turned, concrete turning to brick and dirt. There were a few worms here and there, dotting the ground, but Martin ignored them. 

The tunnel was longer than Martin thought it could physically be, and it didn’t look like any kind of utility basement. There were no bundles of wires along the ceiling, just the occasional grate or pipe lining the floor or walls. The tunnel wound back and forth, and Martin made choices between corridors at random. He would have to remember them later. After what seemed like a million years of adrenaline-soaked, exhausting running, Martin stumbled to a stop, Jon behind him.

“Hold your breath,” he gasped out, holding up his fire extinguisher and spraying the ground all around them. Then he sprayed a couple of quick puffs on Jon’s clothes. Hopefully not enough to freeze him but enough to choke any worms that had survived.

Jon wavered a bit, eyes cast down and unfocused. He barely reacted to Martin spraying him, except to flinch a little. Martin started patting himself down, keeping an eye on the ground around them. He was breathing like he’d just run for an hour. He was a hair’s breadth away from breaking, but he had to cling to whatever productivity he could muster until then. There were worms on him, maybe _in_ him. He needed the corkscrew.

“Jon,” he said. “We need to check for...oh god, for worms.” He picked a worm off of his arm and threw it to the ground, stomping on it viciously. He could see a few on Jon, who was still largely motionless. “Jon?”

After a moment that was agonizingly long in Martin’s panic-driven brain, Jon looked up at him. His face was blank. He needed to breathe, if the CO₂ was still making him fuzzy. Martin could see the tails of worms sticking out of him and it turned his stomach. They had to come out. So much had to happen at once and Martin was unable to control or orient his thoughts.

“Are you okay?” Martin asked. He looked around helplessly and then settled on the wall. “Sit, alright? Just sit and we’ll sort this.” Jon seemed to take a second to register the command, and then he lowered himself stiffly against the wall. “I think they got her. I think. I mean, we’re not getting overrun, are we? That’s probably. Good.”

The worms in Jon’s face and neck weren’t moving, but they were still there. Martin hesitated for a second and then took the corkscrew from his pocket. He crouched down. “Jon? Say something. You’re...kind of freaking me out, and that’s saying something right now.”

“Right,” Jon said, blinking a few times. His hand came to his own face, brushing lightly over worms and bloody skin. “I’m...Martin, it’s…”

“Worms?” Martin prompted. Jon shook his head.

“No.” He seemed to be regaining some sense of where he was, and he looked around what meager part of the tunnel they could see in the light of Martin’s phone. “It’s quiet.”

“You can’t hear them?” That was fantastic, actually, because it meant that the mass of worms was either too far away or dead. 

“I can’t hear _anything.”_

Oh god, had he gone deaf somehow? Were there worms in his ears? Martin had the visceral image of a worm burrowing through his ear drum and fought back a violent shudder. His eyes widened and he watched Jon apprehensively. “Oh. I mean. Well. That’s.”

Jon seemed to understand what Martin meant and shook his head minutely. “I can hear with my _ears_. I just can’t...I...is it always this quiet?” His voice was small. 

Martin gaped at him. _“Can you hear me?”_ he thought. Jon didn’t make a move to show that he had, not a flinch at the volume or a twitch in his face. Martin swallowed. “You really can’t.”

Jon shook his head. He was starting to look less catatonic and considerably more bewildered. “I…” he started, cutting himself off with an incredulous laugh, “I don’t know what you’re thinking.”

“What, CO₂ kills supernatural worms _and_ cures you of mind-reading?” Martin asked. 

“Apparently,” Jon said. He was almost smiling, and it was an odd look. A good one on him. Except for all the _worms._

“Right. Well. I suppose we can figure that out later,” Martin said. “It’s time to get unpleasant.” He held up the corkscrew.

“Because the past half hour has been so pleasant otherwise,” Jon said.

“Best afternoon I’ve had in weeks,” Martin said. 

Jon smiled again, faint and tired and exasperated, and despite everything he was still pretty. Then his eyes went to the corkscrew and the smile slid into a grimace. “Of course. Well, I suppose let’s...get it over with.”

Under different circumstances Martin would have felt some kind of way about carefully tilting Jon’s head to the side and getting so close to him in a place where Jon couldn’t hear his thoughts. Unfortunately, there were worms and blood involved and it was the aftermath of a traumatic event, so Martin did a very good job of not having a crush on his boss.


	8. What Happened to Gertrude Robinson

Martin may have underestimated how much of a problem forgetting the turns he’d taken would pose. For a little while he was sure he’d figured out the path back, but they just kept walking and the tunnels just kept going and he knew he’d made a wrong turn somewhere. The tunnels were big--too big to fit under the Institute, it seemed like they must go under the entirety of Chelsea--and even the variations in the dirt on the ground and pipes in the walls didn’t help make any of it more identifiable. 

Their biggest problem, as long as Martin didn’t focus on the fact that they were trapped underground, was that they were both bleeding. They’d gotten all of the worms out, as far as they could tell, with no small amount of yelling and cursing, but they had nothing to help with the resulting holes. A secondary problem was that Martin’s phone was dying, and it was their only source of light. 

Jon, for his part, was still marveling over his inability to hear any of Martin’s thoughts. 

“It would be useful about now, though,” Martin grumbled as they rounded another corner into another empty, long hallway. “You could at least tell what was above us.”

“That’s only if we haven’t gone deeper underground,” Jon countered. “I can’t hear that far.”

“Well, it’d be better than we’re doing now,” Martin said. “I feel like we’ve already gone this way.”

“I don’t know,” Jon said. “It looks a bit different.”

Martin thought he might be able to _feel_ his wounds getting infected, the longer they walked. They’d tried backtracking, and then backtracking from that, and now Martin had no idea how far they were from the Archives. 

There were spiderwebs nestled in the corners, juxtaposed with the occasional food wrapper discarded on the floor. Martin didn’t like the idea that there had been someone else in here anything approaching recently. Did Jane Prentiss have to eat regular food? There were so many questions he had about her and the worms and, honestly, everything.

“Hold on, did you hear that?” Jon asked suddenly. Martin froze.

“Hear what?” he asked. 

Jon was quiet, squinting as he listened. There was a moment, and then Martin heard it too. A voice. Yelling. Far enough away that he couldn’t quite tell what it was saying, but he recognized enough the tone of the words. 

“Tim,” Jon said. 

The relief that flooded through Martin was almost enough to fell him. “Oh, thank god,” he breathed. Then he yelled back, his own voice echoing tightly down the hall. “Tim! We’re here! We’re over here!”

He couldn’t tell where Tim’s voice was coming from, but it was joined a moment later by another. Sasha, this time. “Martin? Martin, is that you?”

“Yeah! We’re okay!” Martin yelled.

“Where are they?” Jon asked, mostly to himself. It was hard to tell direction, but Tim and Sasha’s voices were getting clearer. 

“Only two options,” Martin said. “Forward or backward. Either we wait or pick one.”

“Did you get eaten?” Tim called. 

“Only a little!” Martin replied. Jon snorted. 

It turned out that they didn’t need to make a decision about which direction to go, because Marti started to see a glow further down the hall. The distinctive glow of a torch on the brick wall, jiggling with footsteps. Martin’s feet started moving of their own accord and soon he and Jon were running toward the light, just as it turned the corner and they were nearly blinded.

“Jesus!” Sasha hissed. 

“Hi,” Martin said, feeling for the first time in hours something approaching sanity.

“Only a little, huh?” Tim said. 

“Could’ve been worse,” Martin said, trying for a little laugh at the end. 

“Yeah, it could always have been _worse,”_ Tim said, distinctly unimpressed.

“Are you okay? Do you need...I mean, you _do_ need medical attention,” Sasha said. 

“I’m assuming you remember the way back,” Jon said, in lieu of a greeting and an answer.

Sasha sighed, still looking at Martin and Jon’s bodies with worry. “I’ve been keeping track of lefts and rights. So unless it changes on us.”

“We’ll talk about how absolutely wild all of this is in a bit,” Tim said. “Secret tunnels and worm lady and all.”

“And what about that text?” Sasha asked, pointing a finger at Martin. “That was a leap of faith, I’ll have you know. I thought...I was about fifty percent sure I’d just killed you.” Then, to Jon, “And _you._ What...what were you _thinking?”_

“Can we flagellate me for my sins aboveground?” Jon asked wearily. 

Sasha sighed, just as wearily. “Yes. And I _will.”_

“I’m your boss,” Jon grumbled.

“Oh, are you going to fire me?” Sasha shot back without real venom. 

They started back the way Sasha and Tim had come. Martin felt suddenly tired, like Sasha and Tim’s arrival had finally allowed him to let go of the tense adrenaline keeping him going. He let out a long, tense breath and promised himself that he’d think about all of this later.

It seemed like they were walking for a while, taking a series of turns that Martin was too tired to follow, and Sasha grew increasingly quiet. After a couple of minutes Tim cleared his throat.

“So,” he started.

“Yeah,” Sasha replied.

“This whole place is just so neat, isn’t it?” Tim said. “Really swell. Love that we’re also getting lost.”

“Sorry,” Sasha said. Tim shook his head, dismissing the apology. “Jon, can you do your thing? I mean, just to see if we’re close to anywhere. I really...I could have sworn I remembered the way.”

“I, um...well, I can’t,” Jon said. “I can’t hear anything.”

Sasha blinked at him. “Oh. Oh? Since when…?”

“Right after the CO2,” Jon said. “Not to say that that’s what _caused_ it, but. Silence.”

“Thank god, I can start thinking about all the nasty stuff I’ve been saving up,” Tim said. “No more watchful eye of the spooky ghost boss.”

Tim’s tone was jovial but strained. Martin could see the aftereffects of panic and worry etched into him.

“I see a door up here,” Tim said, casting his torch light over the wall. They were coming to a T-shaped intersection, the door directly in front of them as they approached. “Sorry about the magic powers. Should we try this?”

“We didn’t exactly come _through_ a door,” Sasha said with a sigh.

“It’s the first thing we’ve seen that isn’t more walls.”

“I know. I didn’t say we shouldn’t check.”

“We could split up and search for the way out,” Jon suggested. “It would be more efficient.”

“Split up,” Martin echoed. “I don’t know if that’s...you know. A good. Idea.”

“I mean to stay in sight of each other,” Jon said, frowning. “I’m not trying to get lost again.”

“Okay, here’s what we can do,” Sasha said. “Tim and I check left and right since we have the actual torches. Martin, I guess...check the door? And anything we might be missing here. We can work our way along.” She hesitated a second. “Sorry, Jon. You don’t really have a light source.”

Martin nodded with some trepidation and Tim shrugged. “Fine by me,” he said.

“Stay within earshot,” Sasha warned. Tim saluted her.

“Roger that, cap’n.”

They split, their lights bobbing into the darkness on either side of the long corridor. Martin went up to the door, checking it over for anything unsavory (worms, other bugs, cave goo monsters). It was unlocked and cold. 

_Please be the way out,_ he thought. _Or at least another way out._

He opened the door and shined his phone light across the floor. No worms or rats or anything except...except papers? Sheets of paper. The way sound echoed in the room made it seem small. There was a cassette tape on one of the papers. Then a box, full of more tapes.

“Anything?” Jon asked. Martin startled and his light flicked up to the rest of the room.

He took a breath. Then another. The person slumped in the chair in the center of the room did not.

“Oh my god,” he murmured, nearly all one word. A cardigan. A pencil skirt. Gray hair, pulled into what remained of a bun. Remarkably intact, undecomposed. There was no smell.

“What on earth,” Jon said behind him, dumbfounded. 

“Oh my _god,”_ Martin said again, taking a step back. He didn’t think that after the worms his heart could beat any faster, but it was, all of a sudden, like it had been juiced by a jumper cable. He’d never seen a dead body before. Not like this. A million questions and complete static were running through his head. 

“What...is that...is that…” Jon stammered. 

“Hey, gang, I think I found us a way!” Tim called brightly, approaching from the hall to their right. Martin couldn’t find a response.

It didn’t matter, because both Tim and Sasha were in the doorway a moment later, and they both fell silent. Martin’s phone light was trained on the corpse, sitting there, blood splattered on its clothes and on the floor and on the hundreds of cassette tapes in boxes around it. 

“Holy _shit,”_ Tim breathed. Sasha’s eyes were saucers.

There, covered in blood and lost in tunnels that shouldn’t have existed beneath the Institute, Martin found out what happened to Gertrude Robinson.

\--

Martin wasn’t used to his bedroom. The size of it, the smell of the sheets, a bit musty after weeks unused. The way that sound echoed in it, his footsteps on the floor as he walked. He kept his bedside lamp on as he lay there, staring at the ceiling. 

He had climbed the ladder in a daze, up through the trapdoor Tim had found in the ceiling, into a dark place in the back of document storage. He’d barely registered Sasha calling the police and, after a bit of negotiation, an ambulance. What he did register was the mass of unmoving worms spread across the floor of the Archives, spilling out of Jon’s office doorway and making every step slick. He also registered a crumpled form, long black hair covering a disheveled body, partially obscured by the worms and Jon’s half-closed door. 

Martin had given it only a momentary glance. After what seemed like no time at all he’d found himself sitting in a seat folded down from the wall of an ambulance with Jon across from him, equally quiet. Jon’s eyes had been darting around but he hadn’t been saying anything or focusing for very long. Eventually he’d shut down, squeezing his eyes shut and putting his head in his hands. 

Getting patched up had taken much longer than Martin had thought it would. There were, horrifyingly, a couple of errant worms that they had missed, but they were extracted without much incident or corkscrew. The emergency staff had shot each other a few odd looks, but if they’d found the sudden worm infestation that unusual they didn’t say anything. Then it was mostly the task of cleaning out each of the worm wounds, getting bandaged up, and being given the order to quarantine for at least a week.

Martin had texted Sasha, as he sat in the corner of the A&E waiting room, asking about the police and the body and any other updates there might be. She shot back a _They’re going to investigate. It’s taken care of. You should sleep,_ which didn’t help at all. Jon had been taking a very long time to come out, much longer than Martin himself had taken, and it was getting dark.

Martin realized that he didn’t have his winter coat anymore--that was still on the floor of the Archives, covered in who-knows-what, and he needed to go somewhere before it got too cold. He still had all of his keys in his pocket. He could go back to his flat, for the first time in weeks. Not that any of his toiletries were there, or most of his clothes. But there was a bed, and he didn’t think that it would be smart, or potentially legal, to go back to the Archives and spend the night there.

He hoped that Jon would be okay. He’d looked distinctly unwell on the ride there. Maybe that’s what took him so long. Well, no matter what was going on, there weren’t better hands for Jon to be in than a hospital. Martin couldn’t help much with that. 

That was how he convinced himself that it was okay to go home.

He’d been freezing by the time he got to his flat. Freezing, covered in bandages, exhausted, and suddenly very lonely. He remembered how much Jane Prentiss’s knocks had echoed through the rooms, walls reflecting the sound in a way that the Archives did not. He also knew that, once he managed to sleep, he’d wake up alone. No promise of an early rising Jon showing up as Martin was making himself tea, no groggy Tim with a coffee, no Sasha hurriedly putting on a tinted chapstick as a potential statement-giver stepped out of the elevator. 

Martin leaned over and looked at his phone. Nothing new, of course. Just the time and a picture he’d taken of a sunset about a year ago. It hadn’t turned out right; the colors were overexposed and pale. He thought about texting Jon, asking if he was okay, if he’d gotten home alright. 

Without Jon right there, it suddenly seemed a much more daunting prospect. He didn’t want to risk waking Jon up if he was asleep. The chances of him responding were low on the best of days anyway, let alone a day like today. Jon was more than capable of getting himself home.

Martin grabbed his phone, typed a quick message, and then set it back down on his bedside table. He didn’t know if he was going to fall asleep, even given how exhausted he felt. His ceiling was very interesting.

His phone buzzed and he rolled over to look at it. 

_Hey, just making sure you got home alright._

_Yes. Thank you, Martin._

Martin smiled and let out a long breath. A knot was unwinding inside of him. Okay. He could try to sleep.

\--

The main thing that spending three weeks away from the Institute did was reveal to Martin that he barely did anything outside of work.

He did his best to relax--really. He wrote some poems he didn’t particularly like and read some books and complained to Isabelle over the phone about how he didn’t have enough hobbies to carry him through an entire day. He thought about visiting his mother, but if there was any possibility that he could be infected with some worm-borne disease he couldn’t take the chance. 

He did call her, only once, and she gave him short answers to all of his questions. _Yes, no, it’s fine, no, I’m in the middle of a game, do you NEED something?_ No, Martin didn’t need anything. He knew his calls just took time away from the things she really wanted to be doing. She had friends there and none of their sons were this pushy. 

Pushy. He hadn’t called her in weeks.

Martin knew that it probably wasn’t healthy, but he was itching to get back to the Archives. If he were smart, he’d be on the first boat out of there, to go back to the university and see if he couldn’t get his old job back, _please_ , yes, he’d apply again. He wouldn’t be surprised if he came back to the Institute and found out that Tim had already quit, and it was just the three of them left in the Archives. 

But there was something there. There were the tunnels and monsters and Gertrude Robinson. Mysteries to be solved, in the one place with enough information to solve them. Something in Martin wanted to _know._

Speaking of Gertrude, Martin hadn’t heard anything from the police. He’d expected to be questioned, maybe. He didn’t know exactly how these things worked, but he could see anyone in the Archives being a suspect in her murder. And from what he’d seen she’d clearly been murdered--gunshots to the chest, blood all over her clothes. It had been more than a year, from what he’d put together of the timeline, since she’d gone missing. And yet her corpse looked--for lack of a better word-- _fresh._ More mysteries, more of the potentially paranormal. 

Someone had been _murdered_ in Martin’s workplace and he still wanted to go back.

Anyway, who would want to kill an _archivist?_ A paper-filer, just a step removed from being a librarian. Not a hot target. Martin had entertained the notion for just a moment that Jon had been the one to do it, a deadly ploy to become the Head Archivist. It was absurd and almost comical to think about. Jon had been even more lost in the tunnels than Martin had. He didn’t seem to enjoy his job, despite the effort he put into it. Certainly not something to kill over. The idea of Jon having a _gun_ was, for some reason, hilarious.

If it were anyone in the general vicinity, Jon would have heard them. Probably. Martin thought it would be hard for someone to have murdered an old lady in a network of secret tunnels and never think about it again. Jon would have heard _something_ about it in the past year. That ruled out a lot of suspects, and made the idea of an outside party all the more likely.

And the fact that Martin couldn’t stop _thinking_ about this meant that he needed more hobbies.

Jon had mentioned in a brief text--a response to Martin checking up on him, as he was wont to do--that his respite had been short-lived and he could once again _hear_ people. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together and blame the secret tunnels. Maybe there was some crazy magic technology that jammed his signals. Maybe all it took to thwart him was six feet of concrete. A million questions, no answers. 

Martin’s first day back at work was a Thursday, a couple weeks into July. Rosie gave him a beaming smile that he cautiously returned, and as he descended the stairs to the Archives he felt a strange relief. It was like coming back to the real world, the first day of school after a holiday. Not necessarily a good thing, but a return to normalcy nonetheless. 

Some part of him had fully expected Tim not to be there, given his general trepidation toward the strange goings-on around the Institute, but at the same time Martin wasn’t surprised to see both Tim and Sasha look up from their desks as he entered the office.

“Shh, dad’s home!” Tim hissed. Sasha rolled her eyes.

“Welcome back,” she said. Martin gave her a weary smile. 

“Thanks,” he said. “Looks like...I guess everything got cleaned up.”

“Yeah, it’s been clear for a while. We both got a week off for that.”

“Well, um. Impromptu holidays for everyone, I suppose,” Martin said as he went to his desk. “Jon back yet?”

“Oh, is he,” Tim said. “Some say he never left at all.”

“Elias had to come down and make sure he went home for another week,” Sasha said. “He was trying to start working just as soon as he got out of quarantine.”

“Of course he was,” Martin muttered. “Anyone want some tea before I get settled?”

“God, I missed you,” Tim said. 

It was all a bit anticlimactic, Martin thought as he started up the kettle. The last time he’d been in the Archives it was full of worms and his own blood and CO2. Now it was basically the same as it had been before. No sign of anything that had happened, except maybe that the carpet had been shampooed. 

Martin carefully carried a mug across the office to Jon’s door. It was closed, as usual, so he knocked lightly. There was a pause, and then: “Come in, Martin.”

After a couple of weeks of not spending most of his day around someone who could read his mind, Martin had to take a second to recalibrate. He pushed the door open and put on his best smile.

Jon was not at his desk, instead sitting cross-legged on the floor with several filing boxes around him and a mess of folders and papers. He looked up when Martin entered, and Martin saw for the first time the still-healing scars on his face. Martin was familiar with them--he had similar ones on his own face, and he’d been looking at them in the mirror for a couple of weeks--but it was still jarring to see them on someone else.

“Good morning,” he said, gesturing to the tea. 

“Is it still morning?” Jon asked, tucking some papers back into a folder and setting it to the side. 

“I just got in,” Martin said. “It’s not ten yet. How...um, how long have you been here?”

As Martin searched for a place to put the mug, he couldn’t help but check the wall. Though the floor and walls were clean and the only thing he could really smell was some faint lemon cleaning liquid, there was a large white board fitted over the place where the worms had come through. The bookshelf that had been there was gone, and the space felt strange without it. 

“I slept,” Jon said, before Martin could even think anything to that effect. 

Martin sighed and set the mug on the corner of the desk closest to Jon’s floor nest. “Defensive.”

“Just letting you know, so you don’t have to waste our time thinking about it,” Jon said.

“What are you looking for?” Martin asked, gesturing at the boxes with his chin.

“Nothing,” Jon said. He squinted at the floor and then added: “Interesting. Nothing interesting.”

“Now you’ve only made me more curious.”

“Research and organization, Martin,” Jon said. “My general job.”

“Are you being suspicious on purpose?”

“Any suspicion you have is your own,” Jon said snippily.

“Right,” Martin said, trying not to let a burgeoning frown overtake him. “Well, um. How was…?”

“Fine. Elias doesn’t seem to understand that I know my limits--” Martin didn’t comment on that, even in his head “--and tried to make me stay away long after I was healed.”

“I’m, um...I’m glad you’re feeling better, then.” Martin’s eyes ran across the statements and boxes on the floor. “Anything I can help with? Like...like with organization. Since that’s _my_ general job.”

Jon paused, probably having heard the question before Martin actually voiced it. He squinted up at Martin. “If I need help I’ll ask,” he finally said. It wasn’t the same kind of harsh dismissal that he would have given when Martin first started there, but it was dismissal all the same.

“Right, okay,” Martin said. “I mean, I’ve gone through a lot of the statements, so...if there are any specific ones you need to find…”

“Thank you, Martin,” Jon said. 

Martin supposed that it had been too much to hope for that spending time pulling worms out of someone’s skin would have made them all that much closer. At least Jon had entertained him in conversation for a while. 

“For the tea, too,” Jon added a bit awkwardly, and Martin remembered that his thoughts were still fair game. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Martin said, trying to show that he recognized the hard work Jon was putting into normal niceties. “Well, I’ll get back to my own. My own organizing.”

He made his way out, closing the door behind him as he left. 

He remembered, as he went back to his desk, that the idea of solving a great mystery was nothing in the face of hundreds, thousands of statements in folders in boxes in storage. There was follow-up to do and incomplete stories and so many obvious fakes. And the reality of Martin’s day-to-day would be as it had been before--organization followed by small talk followed by emails. He wasn’t Indiana Jones, trudging through the underbrush to discover an ancient, abandoned temple. He was an archival assistant who put papers in number order. The immediacy of the supernatural in Jane Prentiss was gone now, and besides a couple of statements related to her it hadn’t opened up any more leads. 

Well, Martin figured that he could do his job, and maybe in time they’d stumble into a new discovery. Another data point to put on the board and draw connections with. The two points that were already there--”worm lady” and “boss who reads minds”--didn’t seem to be connected. Even if they were, Martin didn’t have enough of the pieces to put them together by himself.

He grabbed a box from storage and started laying files out across his desk. 

\--

Jon’s door opened quickly enough that Martin’s head jerked up at the noise. It had largely been business as usual for the past few days, with Jon seldom leaving his office except to leaf through boxes in Document Storage. 

“What’s this about a delivery?” he asked, directing his gaze at Sasha. She blinked.

“Oh! Yeah, sorry. I forgot about it. This delivery guy came by with something for you last week. Completely slipped the mind.” 

“It’s fine,” Jon said. “What was delivered?” He scanned her eyes, looking for the answer before she could voice it. 

“One small package and a big table. They put the table in Artifact Storage, I think. Just in case. It had some pattern on it. You never know with those kinds of things,” she said. With the way Jon was analyzing her Martin thought for sure she must be nervous, but she seemed entirely calm.

“Where in my desk?” Jon asked, turning back to look into his office. Sasha opened her mouth to say something but he was already retreating inside. “Thank you.”

“Man, he’s really done pretending to be normal, huh?” Tim said as the door closed, voice low. It didn’t matter, of course, but Martin supposed it made him feel better. 

Sasha shrugged. “It certainly saves time.” She bit at her lip and Martin saw for the first time a bit of worry. “It’s just…”

“Spooky?” Martin offered. 

“No. I mean, yes, obviously. But no, I just...I don’t think I was thinking about it just now. The delivery.”

“You must have been on some level,” Tim said. 

“I’d honestly forgotten about it until he mentioned it.”

“He can only hear your surface thoughts,” Martin said, half an assertion and half seeking confirmation. 

“And if he can do any more than that I’m tendering my resignation immediately,” Tim said. 

“Yeah,” Sasha said a bit vaguely, watching Jon’s door. “I must have been thinking about it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was absolutely impossible to write for some reason, but here we go! Gotta keep chuggin'.


End file.
